Europe
Trip Start
Aug 01, 2008
1
137
150
Trip End
Dec 20, 2008
Where I stayed
MV Aenne Rickmers
Crete, Greece
Monday, December 8, 2008
Off Crete N 34° 43.9' E 24° 01.3'
Fine but windy, no ships in sight. I had expected our first sight of Europe to be the island of Gávdhos off Crete at around 10:30, but the mountains of Crete itself were visible from the deck as I completed my walk at 09:00, even though more than 30 miles away. Crete was still visible behind us at 15:00.
In the evening we had another small "party". This included small sausage-cum-burgers grilled on a BBQ on F Deck and the captain's aubergine salad, which was very tasty but filling. (After two helpings each for seven or eight of us, the bowl still looked full; it will take us a week to eat it all.) Somehow, I got inveigled into an appointment tomorrow to a) drink Turkish coffee and b) demonstrate Irish coffee - the description the captain gave bears no resemblance to the stuff we drink. Unfortunately, we had the 2nd Officer's music yet again; I tried to get in first but the saloon CD player doesn't work.
It transpires that the captain hasn't been able to get a confirmed new plan or schedule, even though we are going to be two days early at La Spezia - with luck, the whole schedule will move up but I haven't seen that happen previously. I also learned that a strange manoeuvre I observed as we left Damietta was in fact very irregular (reversing and turning after passing a CMA CGM ship): the captain had taken control back from the pilot who had us heading for a grounding.
Just like previous late nights, this one was disturbed by alarms and other noise; they're evidently not coincidence.
