The next five days took us from the Azores across the Atlantic to the Sargasso Sea and then the Caribbean.
Azura avoided tropical storm Oscar for the first four days and on the last day there was a serious medical emergency.
This initially meant a high speed dash to St Maarten but later in the evening a helicopter came to airlift the passenger to hospital.
Day 6 Wednesday 24th October on the Atlantic
I awoke and at first I wasn’t sure why. Then I heard the sound of chanting drifting through the walls. Outside on the balcony the chanting was loud enough to drown out the sound of the sea – this was my good morning ‘call’ at 5.45 am.
Breakfast was in the Oriental and was again a pleasant one with conversations about cruises, destinations and experiences.
Our cabin was not quite finished being serviced and we sat on the balcony reading. The day was so much brighter than our time in Ponta Delgada that we just wanted to be outside in the sun.
Peninsular Club lunch
The Peninsular lunch was scheduled for noon and we allowed ourselves the time to shower and change before riding the lifts back down to the Oriental. The queue stretched from the doors across the open space and up both sets of stairs.
When the officer on the bridge started his navigation update as the doors opened. We joined everyone streaming into the restaurant. Once we found our table there was just one couple already seated.
The seven places on the table all had place names. We sat down to wait to be joined by a ship’s officer and the other couple. Once service started the seats to our right remained empty even after several checks by the Loyalty Cruise Manager. The fine weather clearly was a better draw than a free lunch.
As usual I declined the glass of fizz and asked for red wine. My wine was delivered by our evening wine waiter. Before he left he promised me that his companion would look after us! He had been one of the many wine waiters delivering the first drinks of fizz to the tables before moving on to other duties.
Our remaining table companions were from Scotland. They lived a few towns away from where we had lived. They had cruised many times before and had been on the older ships such as Canberra.
The ship’s officer told us about his favourite ships in the fleet. After some gentle pressing about tattoos and especially his, he told us that all his tattoos had done below decks on P&O ship’s rather than onshore at a tattoo parlour.
My wine glass was indeed kept topped up with a red wine.
Afternoon
Once back in the cabin I picked up my book, read a bit and closed my eyes for quite a bit more!
Evening and a Playhouse theatre
In the Planet Bar the Everglow Duo were playing as we had our pre-dinner drinks and I had Doom Bar again. From this one I took at least half of it down to the Oriental to have with my meal.
I had two starters, pulled pork and salad Lyonnaise. I went large for my main and had the P&O mixed grill followed by a New York cheesecake.
The guest performers in the Playhouse Theatre, Ida, sang a combination of opera and popular songs. Their voices were wonderful and we thoroughly enjoyed their show.
After the show, back in the cabin I tried to access all the movies that I had downloaded onto my iPad from Amazon Prime. I then discovered that I had to have a Wi-Fi connection in order to watch them.
What a waste of time. Definitely time for an early night.
From the Captain’s Log
At Sea (Noon Posn: 36° 44.1’N, 031° 27.0’W)
At 02:00 Azura retarded her clocks by 60 minutes, bringing ships time to GMT -1. Wednesday marked the first of five sea days ahead of Azura as we began our Great Circle track to the Caribbean. Great Circle navigation is the fastest means of reaching one point on a sphere (in this case the globe) to another point. The vessel’s Trackpilot system automatically updated our course as we travelled south west across the Atlantic Ocean.
Weather: Mostly cloudy, dry conditions
Temperature: 21 °C
Wind: Easterly, Force 6