Atlantic Crossing Day One
Today was our first in a five-day marathon run across the Atlantic Ocean. The days can be long and the temperature will gradually increase; this is a perfect opportunity for passengers to settle into a good book or two, top up their tans on the top decks or indulge in one or two of the activities laid on for them (including mine or Peter Counsell’s art classes, or a choice of lectures).
The first day out from Mindelo always means the emergence of flying fish, of which there are many to be seen skimming across the surface of the water, away from the hull of the ship. Flying fish come in different shapes and sizes, and fly alone or in large squadrons. Apparently, a group of flying fish is technically referred to as a ‘glide’, which seems very appropriate.
Today was the first proper opportunity I’ve had to do some painting of my own, and after a leisurely breakfast and some fresh air out on deck, I spent most of the morning in the cabin, painting one of two planned pieces featuring the fishing boats in Mindelo harbour.
At 12noon, I joined Tracey upstairs for lunch by the pool. There’s an outdoor grill there, where sausages, burgers and chips are served. Since the bistro was jam-packed to the gills, burger and chips seemed the perfect lunch choice.
In my class this afternoon, I had the group painting winter trees. Tomorrow, it’ll be summer trees; I like to start with the winter-bare variety, though, because I believe that it’s important to know what’s happening beneath the surface of the foliage.
The TV in our cabin has been permanently tuned to channel one, which shows a live navigational map, as it scrolls through three zoom levels, showing us where we are in the world, what speed we’re doing, what direction we’re heading, what times sunrise and sunset are at our location, and the depth of the sea beneath us (which is currently around about four and a half thousand metres).
The map patiently draws out where we’ve been with a straight yellow line, and tells us how far we’ve travelled from Tilbury. It should also tell us how far it is to our next port-of-call, but it seems to have got its knickers in a bit of a twist. It appears to have become fixated on Las Palmas (in the Canary islands) for some reason, and is constantly telling us how far we are away from it, which is now behind us, so the distance is slowly increasing. I think they’ve tried to fix it – I saw the screen change momentarily to a live computer screen, with the mouse pointer flipping through the ‘CruiseShow’ program settings under the control of some unseen IT operative – but so far, it remains insistent that we’re heading for Las Palmas, and have missed it. Like some manically hormonal sea-going sat-nav, I expect it to start getting tetchy and insisting that we turn around at the earliest opportunity and head back…
The clocks went back one hour last night; something that’s going to happen a couple of times over the next few days. Gaining hours is quite nice – it’s losing them on the return journey that can be a little tough…
