Saturday April 23, 2016 – St. George’s Day – At sea off Yemen near Somalia – Pirate country for sure!!!! The big worry however was not the Pirates, but the issue with the ever increasing number of cases of Norovirus on the ship. Captain Wells keeps us informed of the progress with all the sanitary issues and the status without ever revealing the numbers. We are all ever more careful and the directive is not to go to the cafeteria, but to go to the main dining room where all can be served and the number of people touching the serving utensils are minimised, thus the cross contamination of the virus . There has been an extra hour time change overnight, so Tachy and Roger are up early and decide to go to the main dining room for breakfast. This is the first time in the nearly 200 nights / mornings I have spent on this ship that we have ventured into the dining room for breakfast. We are sat at a table for 6 and soon the table is filled with an English couple, former Royal Navy, then an English aristocratic lady by herself and finally Owen McDonald, the ship’s Liason person who is with the Royal Navy and here to work out any support in case of piracy. It turns out these last two individuals are there alone as their spouses have come down with the Norovirus, so much of the conversation hinged around what are the measures they have to take. The problem was that due to the overwhelming number of people following the Captain’s instructions, it took forever to get breakfast. We had allowed an hour from the arrival to the time we wanted to go to the Port lecture. Well we each ordered poached eggs on toast and it took 1 1/2 hours to get them and finish breakfast! We were thus late, but attended what we could of Graham Howell’s Port lecture on Limassol, Cyprus which we visit after Jordan and the Suez Canal. Diana and Nelson had arrived early so got the full lecture. We then all attended the excellent “celebrity” speaker – Caroline Aston – titled “So Stately but so Stiff” and was about Queen Elizabeth’s grandmother, Queen Mary, after whom this ship is named. A fascinating insight into the shy timid person and the family dynamics, all spoken without notes or pauses, by the erudite Ms Aston. Deciding not to return to the main dining room (Britannia) we ventured to the cafeteria (King’s Court) which was basically empty and enjoyed a good meal. After which siestas and picture organization and to the afternoon lecture by the very amusing HM Customs’s agent – Malcolm Nelson who continued his discussion about catching drug smugglers, amusing us with some of the real cases he worked during his time at Heathrow. Tachy’s leg was still bothering her so she opted for dinner in the room and the three of us had a nice formal dinner in the Britannia dining room.
Sunday April 24, 2016 – Roger was up early and in the gym with trainer at 8 AM and upon returning to the cabin an hour and a half later, found Tachy with abdominal pain and a runny tummy coupled with nauseous feelings. Oh no, it seems like she has come down with the Norovirus! After further medical consultations, indeed she was one of the unlucky ones to have come down with the dreaded problem. At the gym, I found out there are now 190 patients and the rate of increase in numbers over the past few days is exponential! The gym and Spa are empty, the ship is devoid of people wandering around, shopping, eating, drinking etc. All have retired to their cabins and have bunkered down. Lecture attendance is way down and even the formal dining room at night is devoid of guests. Anyway, poor Tachy received a package from the medical office of the do’s and dont’s and a special menu. A designated team of room stewards come in and do a thorough sterilisation of the room, change the linens and towels and wrap all the soiled linens in red plastic bags, with our regular steward Bert Espinosa not permitted to enter the room. All our laundry also goes into special bags and is done in the hot water laundry of the ship (as opposed to us using the regular “home style” washing machines on the floor). Based also on the recommendations, it is best for Roger to be out of the room, thus avoiding contact with the surfaces and contagion. So I went to hear Malcolm Nelson (HM Customs) do his third presentation, this time on people he has arrested for swallowing bags of cocaine or heroin and attepting to pass through customs at Heathrow. Apparently the record thus far is 820 drug packages that were removed from one individual. Several people have died because of drug overdose when one of the bags breaks. He went into great detail on how the retrieval of these balloons or condoms filled with drugs, takes place. Apparently it has progressed from using a bent coathanger to wade through the material excreted, to sieves to now the more sophisticated, Frost Machine. This is a device, built by the manufacturer Frost that looks like a regular toilet which the smuggler sits on, the excrement with drugs passes into a special box which has rubber arms for the operator to process and then pass the drugs into a separate box for washing and then to a sterilised container. What a business to be in!!!! The packages are now much more sophisticated and are vacuume packed in a manufacturing facility, shirk wrapped to eliminate air (which is what appears in the abdominal X-Ray) and is specially tapered for ease of swallowing and ease of retrieval at the other end! Graham Howell did another Port Lecture on Haifa, Israel and after checking up on Tachy, we went to lunch followed by cabin time. I did go to a very interesting talk by Park Sims on the “Magic Fibonacci Numbers”. Leonardo Fibonacci was a brilliant Italian mathemetician (Piza 1170 – 1250) was the person who introduced the Hindu-Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ….) to the Western world, that up to the time were using the Roman Numerals I, V, X, L, C, M. He was asked to solve a problem in which a field has 2 rabbits, a male and a female who take 1 month to reach adulthood and then one more month to produce 2 babies (male and Female). Assuming no deaths, or escaping from the field, how many rabbits would be in the field at year end. Working the calculations, he develops this series of numbers which bear his name and is – 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610 etc (the next number in the series in the sum of the prior two terms). If one observes nature like petals on any flower in the world, all will have the number of petals that are equal to one of the Fibonacci Numbers. Like that there is a tremendous correlation in nature with Fibonacci numbers and the ratio (of one term in the series to another) of 1.6180339887 ….. Rectangles that are most pleasing are using a Fibonacci “Golden Ratio” etc. After the lectures and dinner we had one other bit of excitement which was that once rounding the corner and safely in the Red Sea, the presence of pirates is unlikely, so the ship slowed down and all the weapons brought on board for the transit through “pirate infested waters” was transferred onto another naval vessel and the RN personnel will soon be getting off. The Captain did announce that as of now, given the current statistics, we would NOT be permitted to dock and proceed ashore in Aqaba, Jordan. However he did say that the outbreak of new cases, is far smaller than it was. Tachy was able to keep down some chicken soup, jello and crackers which is good. Hopefully she will have a light case and soon be back to normal.
Monday April 25, 2016 – Still at sea with nowhere to go, as the comedian quipped tonight – a world cruise to nowhere! During the day the Captain kept us informed of what was happening with the gastrointestinal issue and he progressively got more pessimistic about Aqaba, Jordan. Finally, just as we were dressing or dinner, he gave us the news that despite his best efforts, those of the Captain of the sister ship Queen Elizabeth currently in Aqaba, Cunard Head office and even the UK foreign office, the Jordanian Government were adamant that we could not under any circumstances dock in Jordan and went even further saying that we were not to even enter Jordanian sea space. So after much re-working, we veered off on our transit through the Red Sea at the Sinai Peninsula, taking the Gulf of Suez towards Egypt and the Suez Canal and not in the narrower Gulf of Aqaba towards Jordan. Arrangements were made so we could transit the Suez Canal a day earlier, arriving in Cyprus for the day, one day earlier and then spending two days, overnighting in Tel-Aviv, Israel, before continuing across the Mediterranean. All this is due to the continued issue of the Norovirus that is affecting so many on the ship. Tachy seems to be getting over her infection and if all continues to go well, she will get her. “Get out of Jail” card at 3:15 PM tomorrow, Tuesday. Apparently one is still infectious and thus quarantined in the cabin for 48 hours after the last “incident”. At that point, she will be able to walk about the ship and get back to a “normal” life. She is weak, but did manage to eat a few times today and all seems to indicate that fortunately, she had a mild case. The good part is that she has been resting her leg and that feels a lot better. So hopefully all will be good with her. Meanwhile, it will be a major logistical nightmare for the crew and staff of the ship. Severe restrictions on food service and sanitisation of all surfaces continues. They sanitise the cabin twice a day, bringing an expert specialised crew, not Bert, our steward.
We did attend various lectures today, learning something along the way. Why is the Red Sea called Red? Anyone? – well up until the 19th century it was known as the Arabian Gulf, but apparently there are five theories as to the name “Red Sea” – 1) Periodically there is an infestation of the Cyanobacteria Trichodesium erythraeum which gives the water a red tint; 2) The nearby Ruby mountains that are rich in red minerals (like copper) give the water a red tint from the reflection; 3) An error in the translation from the Bible and Book of Exodus, between the Arameic, Hebrew and Greek which should be Reed (as in bull-rush) Sea; and 4) It comes from a local tribe called the Himirites which translated means red and 5) The colour corresponds to a cardinal direction. Many cultures do not have words for North, South etc, but refer to directions by colours – Red is South, Black is North. Whichever theory you choose, the reality, looking now over the railings, is that it is not Red, but the same gray / blue colour as any other sea. What we have found is that as the East / West land masses of Aftica (Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan) and Asia (Middle East sub-continent) of Saudi Arabia and Yemen are so close, there is very little wave action and the sea is very flat. By the way, the Red Sea is getting bigger and the East / West land masses are being spread apart, such that in a million years or so, Africa will be a separate Island with no land bridge to the European or Asian continents. Enough to of that for now, but I thought it was a new interesting bit of information, to add to the cesspool of irrelevant facts in my brain!!! We enjoyed Graham Howell’s Port lecture on Kusadasi, Turkey followed by Malcom Nelson’s fourth talk on smuggling, this time on fur coats, alcohol jewels and other such high priced items. He is always amusing about his real life stories. He said – I can’t tell you the name of the tall actor person who I stopped one day, but he did run a faulty hotel in Torquay! – he then proceeded to tell the story of being stopped for smuggling 4 new expensive suits tailored in Hong Kong. At the same time Diana and Nelson went to an interview of Caroline Aston (the Royal watcher and presenter). We then met up for what is a very complex subject, made easy science by the excellent Park Sims on “Heat Pumps” or heat exchangers, giving as an example refrigerators and air conditioning. The afternoon was spent working on photographs and then a formal dinner followed by a visit to the Commodore Club bar and the show – A very amusing Irish comedian – Roy Walker. So ends another day at sea, we are not sure exactly where we will next be on land, but we know it will NOT be the intended port of Aqaba, but may hopefully be Limassol, Cyprus.
Roger & Anne Travels 