Sea Day 1

Sea Day – Civitaveccia to Malta

Today's a sea day.  We're heading down the west coast of Italy, and will take a right to loop around the left of Sicily on our way to Malta.  Malta is directly below Sicily, so the direct route would be to fly the ship right over Sicily, passing Mt. Etna on our left.  If we went around Sicily to the left, it would take a little longer, but we'd go through the Strait of Messina, between the toe of the boot of Italy and Sicily.  That would be way cooler.  The Mediterranean is chock full of places which “are said to be” one of the stops Odysseus made in The Odyssey. The Strait of Messina has always been associated with Scylla and Charybdis, the original rock and a hard place.

Apparently the Strait of Messina is pretty tricky to navigate; it twists around at its narrowest part, and the collision of cold water from the north (where we're coming from) and the south (Ionian Sea) makes for some interesting currents and even sometimes whirlpools.  I'm actually guessing that we're going to sail around the west of Sicily.  This ship, unlike the river ship, assumes that passengers would like to know where we are, and has a ship tracker.  There are a whole lot of very large digital screens – maybe four feet by three feet – around the ship, and they're touch-screens, providing a variety of information (which is useful when you're lost; it's a big enough ship that we still get lost).  One of the offerings is a Ship Tracker, which provides a map of our route, ending at the point where we are at the moment.  I checked this this morning, since I was curious which way we were going, and we seemed to be heading toward the western route, but at that point it wasn't definite.  I really like the ship tracker.

Once again, coming to you live from the Explorer's Lounge, it's still dark outside.  There is, and has been much of the night, a little motion in the ship, not much now, but more noticeable when we left Civitaveccia.  So, to recap:  some ship jiggling on our first night; none on the second night or third night, and some last night, and now.  Something about cross currents, I suppose.  As opposed to never feeling like you were moving on the river ship.

There is some light leaking through a mostly cloudy eastern sky, just a little gray right now.  I went out on the deck to do some research regarding the wind, and it's breezy but nothing more, so that's probably not a factor in ship movement (it's also warm!).  I could see another ship way off our port bow.  Because I'm lazy, and don't want to walk all the way down to the ship tracker, I looked us up online, to see how far we had come since I got up, and where we were going.  I found this tool, similar to the one I use to check shipping at the Cape.  I can also see other ships – man, is the Mediterranean busy!  Traffic all over the place.  The other ship looks like... well, it's hard to tell; our position was reported almost an hour ago, and the other ship's position was reported seven minutes ago, so we've gone by the ship I thought it might be.  Got that?  Twelve dimensional chess.  I'm glad someone who knows what they're doing is driving the ship, and not me.  

Anyway, from our position and the way we're pointed, we're going west around Sicily.

Another research trip.  Rain.  Wind has picked up.  Saw some lightning a while ago.  But it's light enough to see the horizon, which is all there is.

There are many things to like about a sea day.  First and most obvious, we are sailing, and we can see.  Generally, the schedule is to sail at night and spend the day in port.  Today, it's sailing all day, and as far as I'm concerned sailing is an important part of this experience.  And when we're out of sight of land, we can see a great big sky, the biggest we'll ever see.  Nothing like that on a river cruise.  And on a day like today, that is awesome.  Right now we seem to be literally sailing from one thunderstorm to the next, with intervals in between when we can see some blue sky and a hint of enormous white thunderheads.  The clouds are wild and monstrous and all shades of gray and white, and changing all the time.  As is the light, coming from different directions as the clouds change.  Lightning erupts occasionally, from whatever storm is nearest.  The sea is not calm, but has not reached the level of whitecaps.  

And given the number of ships in this body of water, according to the ship tracker, it is remarkably lonely.  We are all that exists, or has existed, in our little world, except for those lights, briefly, at dawn.  It's as unique an experience as you can have. 

[ABBEY: We worked out computer time so that I can be included on the journals Gary sends out.  He is doing a terrific job recording our journey, but sometimes I have perspectives to include, like this saga: The whiny ventilator is still waking me up at night. Viking, specifically guest services, Eugene, has been trying to help. Unfortunately, they need to hear it when it is making the whine, which means me calling, during the night, getting dressed so that the engineers can come and listen, and waiting til they get here. I finally did that last night. 3 times. The first 2 x's, in my ignorance, I wasn't correctly dialing. Ugh. Anyway, Eugene has suggested changing rooms... we'll keep you posted...

I also wanted to comment that the lunch buffet offers gelato daily! So far, I've been able to resist it because they also offer sorbet! Which makes marvelous cookiewiches when stuffed between the double chocolate cookies available nearby.]

Sometime during the midmorning, we left the region of thunderstorms and entered the region of bright sun, huge puffy clouds far away, and endless sea all around.  This is what I'm talking about.  As the sun moves across the sky, the color of the clouds shifts subtly, never less than spectacular.  We could be in for an unforgettable sunset.

I attended a lecture this morning (as the sky was clearing outside) about the history of Malta, which I boiled down for Abbey (who was trying to sleep after not sleeping at night because of the whining noise), “Malta is in the exact middle of the Mediterranean.  It's either in the way or a very useful strategic location.  Everyone has owned Malta at some point; now it's an independent country.  They make honey and lace.”  Also, to no one's surprise, Napoleon was involved.

In the afternoon, after a couple turns around the upper promenade, Abbey and I attended a lecture/tour of the Bayeaux Tapestry.  We had noted that each of the two stairwells, on each deck, had a very magnified scene from the Bayeaux Tapestry on the wall, a different one each time.  We thought it was cool – we saw the Tapestry (which is an embroidery, not a tapestry) during our France 2024 trip – but thought it was an odd choice for stairwells on a cruise ship.

Well, I was embarrassed that I didn't figure it out.  If you remember (see link above), the Tapestry was embroidered shortly after William the Conqueror earned the “conqueror” part of his name by conquering England at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.*  The Tapestry is the story of that whole process, across seventy yards of fabric.  The connection is that the Normans, of which William was one, were descendants of the Northmen (Vikings) who settled in northern France after terrorizing Charles the Bald in Paris (see same link, above).  So it actually makes perfect sense that Viking cruise lines has excerpts from the Bayeaux Tapestries in their stairwells.  In a complete coincidence, I am reading a book about important ships in history that Abbey found for me in the ship's library, and I'm reading about William the Conqueror's ship, as well as all the other invasion ships:  they were all, essentially, Viking longboats.

Anyway, the 'History of Malta' lecturer was our tour guide for this trip, which was pretty interesting –

Isola de Marettimo, Sicily

we started at the top of one stairwell, and walked down to talk about each excerpt; when we got to the bottom, we went over to the other stairwell, took the elevator up to the top, and repeated the process.

She began with the premise that the Tapestry was the official version of the story, and that history is written by the winners.  She made a case for William's justification for the invasion being not quite as noble and legitimate as the Tapestry makes out.  All in all, it was fun and gave us a different way to look at this particular history.

We came back and went out on the balcony and – wow!  There's a big mountain, down to the southeast.  The very tip of the corner of Sicily, an island mountain – the mountain is Monte Falcone (Falcon Mountain?) and the island is Isola de Marettimo.  We'll be turning left soon.

Dinner, which was lobster, and a few laps around the ship (Abbey 4, Gary 2), and then back to the room to prepare to outfox the whine.  We'll let you know how it worked out.

* - Before October 1066, he was William the Bastard.