Sunday – Later…..

It turns out, we’d stopped and turned around; several hours after leaving Crete, we were…. approaching Crete. Hungry for information, I headed outside, in time to see loads of people all lined up along our starboard side, watching a passenger being picked up by a coastguard – luggage and all. There’s yet to be an official announcement on what the problem was, but, piecing together the jigsaw of 2nd- and 3rd-hand snippets, it seems the passenger in question was very ill, and has had to be shipped off to hospital. One chap I spoke to (who, I think, is the jeweller off the ship) said that he’d been asked by a patient a short time earlier which was the way to the surgery – and that he’d said he needed to get there urgently – very urgently…. other rumours are that it was some sort of a heart condition, that they couldn’t diagnose or treat properly on board ship – hence the disembarkation. Either way; it seems the coastguard pulled up alongside the Black Watch, a gangplank was thrown across the intervening gap, and the passenger was able to walk across by himself. In only a matter of a few minutes, the coastguard was on his way, and we’d turmed back to our proper course….

In addition to to all of this, there was the most incredible electric storm going on ahead of the ship soon afterwards… lightning flashes going off ten to the dozen… and to think I was about to turn in for the night…