2004 Europe

First Formal Night





April 17 – Today the weather was warm and the ship was still rocking a little. They put out the traditional apples, crackers and seasickness bags. The movement is not that bad but they like to be careful. We spent the day in shipboard activities, lectures, an amber seminar, and of course eating. This was the first of 4 formal evenings and the captain’s reception party so I wore my tux for the first time. The people with us in the picture above are all on the Noordam's cruise staff. The girl on my right was Miss Mississippi in 1997. The evening’s entertainment was a musical performed by the ensemble cast on the Noordam, four men and six women. They did a review of famous personalities, Frank Sinatra, Elvis, Judy Garland, Diana Ross, etc., wearing their costumes and singing their music. They are all good dancers and four, two men and two women, are good singers. A girl named Casey is the best singer and she is very good. Note: I later discovered that Casey is actually KC, and her first name is Kari.



April 18 – We seem to be sailing a more northerly course than I would have suspected this morning. The sky is cloudy and it’s a little cooler. We attended a seminar on pearls and a coffee chat with the members of the Noordam cast who performed last night. The oldest performer is in his early 30s the rest are just out of college and starting their careers.



I just found out that a man fell in his room last night and broke his hip. We are diverting north to Bermuda to drop him off for more advanced medical care. We should get there tomorrow AM and then continue on our way to Horta in the Azores. The captain was sailing a rhumb line course for our first landfall in Europe, Horta in the Azores. A rhumb line course allows you to steer a constant heading to the destination and avoid recalculating the heading every so often. It isn’t the shortest distance between two points on a sphere, read as the earth, but it simplifies navigation. With our diversion to Bermuda we are sailing almost straight north at the moment. When we get to Bermuda he will compute a new course northeast and sail a great circle route. A great circle is the shortest distance between two points on a sphere, but we will be some 200 nautical miles north of the original rhumb line and in much colder, rougher waters. Ironically, although we have diverted north before sailing east, in essence doing two sides of a triangle rather than the hypotenuse, because the new course is a great circle and the old course was a rhumb line, we will sail a shorter total distance to get from Ft. Lauderdale to Horta. Extremely counter intuitive unless you know some geometry and a little about navigation.



The ms Noordam has tea at 4PM every afternoon but this afternoon they had Royal Dutch Tea. Instead of the usual assortment of cookies etc. they provided a very elaborate layout of tea sandwiches, scones, cakes, chocolate covered strawberries and assorted pastries. This evening’s performer was Justin Miller, a guitarist. He was great!! Diana bought two of his CDs. He is also a music historian and has a doctorate in psychiatry and taught for 11 years at Yale and Colombia medical schools. He will be giving a lecture tomorrow on the ‘big band’ era.

(c) 2004 Rod Longenberger