Sunday, August 9, 2015
We moved the clocks back an hour last night as we crossed
time zones. That meant an extra hour of sleep this weekend and I think we could
all use it. Clay was up first. When we got to the dining room, it was much more
populated than it was yesterday morning even though people had nowhere to go
today. I was hoping for a special Sunday breakfast this morning. Unfortunately
for me the chef’s special was crepes filled with cottage cheese. I can’t abide
cottage cheese! It was another ham and cheese omelet for me. It had orange and
white cheese today so that was my Sunday special. Clay ate from the buffet and
got a banana and a chocolate chip muffin so that was his Sunday special.
The first lecture by Fred Stonehouse was from 9:30 to
10:30am and was the Saint Lawrence: Saltwater to Seaway. It was about the
history, present and future of the seaway and its craft and cargo. Next up is
an hourlong disembarkation talk by Ken (scary!), lunch, afternoon lecture on
the Great Lakes and college team trivia at 3:30 to 4pm. The Captain’s Farewell
Reception is from 6 to 6:30pm. Dinner is 6:30pm.
We don’t have Internet today which is unfortunate since we’d
like to do online checkin about now. I guess I’ll see if Clay can do it through
his phone. We’ll have to wait to get boarding passes when we get to ORD anyway
since there is no print center onboard.
Well, I guess Ken was being overly generous when he
scheduled his disembarkation talk for one hour as it only lasted 20 minutes. In
other news, we still have no Internet and Clay has no cell signal either. I
guess we can check in when we get to ORD.
Good news is that we got checked in online at last and both
got TSA pre-check. Now we just have to get our boarding passes at the airport
since we can’t print onboard. We had hoped since we have only carry ons that we
could go straight to security but now we’ll have to find a desk or kiosk to
print boarding passes. Oh well. That reminds me that there seemed to be a high
percentage of passengers onboard Saint Laurent that did not get their luggage
in Montreal. They were coming from all over America and just didn’t get their
checked bags. The really bad news is that they didn’t get their bags delivered
to the Saint Laurent until Sault Ste. Marie.
Back from lunch. I had lemon pepper roasted free range
chicken and it was a huge serving. Clay ate the leg. Clay had the tandoori
chicken Caesar salad. We both had Sacher torte for dessert.
We went to Fred Stonehouse’s Great Lakes lecture. It was
interesting. The Great Lakes contain 21% of all the earth’s fresh water! We
left before trivia started. The grand prize for the winning team was going to
be lanyards. Not enough to tempt us into it!
Oh, the sailing today! I have been conspicuously silent on the
subject and that falls under no news is good news. When we woke up this
morning, the water was so calm it was almost glassy. We could see land on the
horizon to the port and to starboard. We walked out on to the outside deck
between our cabin and the dining room on the way to breakfast in disbelief and
amazement. It was just little splashy water noises. During the day it has
gotten hazy as we have left all visible land behind and the water has just been
rippled but still smooth. It would have been a perfect sailing day except for the
fact that Saint Laurent is leaning, tilted to the starboard side about 8
degrees. Clay agrees with me for once and is not accusing me of exaggerating.
He says it is clearly tilted and a ball would roll across the deck if you put
one down on it. We sat for a while at the aft of the 5th deck and
you could turn your head and see the horizon on one side a foot from the top
rail and on the other side even with the rail. I had pointed it out this morning
in the dining room, but he didn’t recognize it ‘til then. He keeps saying that
if he were the Captain, he’d be leveling the ship out. I have a theory. I’d
level it out too if I could but I think something happened and he can’t. The
day we were in Sault Ste. Marie, John’s Septic Service (I am not making this
up!) ran trucks back and forth all afternoon and into evening pumping our
sewage out. No problem. It is hard to believe we could wait that long!
Yesterday in Mackinac, we had blue hoses running all day filling our potable
water tanks. Somehow, I think the imbalance was created and they can’t sail us
level now. Without the tilt, it would have been a fantastic sailing day. I’ll
take the tilt over big waves anyday!
We went to the Captain’s Farewell reception this evening. We
went early to make sure we’d get seats because we wanted to finally see our
Captain. We’ve been on 9 days and now we’ve seen him and we still don’t know his
name or where he’s from. People were so noisy that we didn’t hear his name when
Ken announced him. He came up and said he’d like to see us all onboard again and
sorry he was saying hello and farewell at the same time but that he’d spent
more time on the bridge than in his bed during this cruise. Then he left. We
didn’t hear enough of his speech to even guess where he might be from, but my
guess is Italian from what little I heard. That was weird. We went down to
dinner a couple of minutes early. There were already passengers seated in the dining
room. I walked around the corner and found all the tables in our little corner
had reserved signs on them. I stopped and told Clay and Brnka and Edgar heard
me and both hastened over to find us another 2-top in Edgar’s area. It was a
different shape and right at the back of the room against the window and it
rattled and shook and it was quite a bit noisier which was surprising. Clay was sitting facing downhill and had to
brace himself to keep from falling face first onto the table. I had to lean
forward. It was not a good final dinner. We both had the chef’s special of
filet mignon and shrimp. Clay ate my shrimp. Clay had a salad to start and peach
melba for dessert. I had tomato consommé to start and vanilla ice cream with
honey for dessert.
Tomorrow we are expected to arrive in Chicago between 3 and
5am. We have to have luggage out by 6am. Pick up passports after 6:30am.
Breakfast is at 6am. We have to disembark by 8am. We booked $45pp transfers to
ORD since there will be no taxis at International Port (construction moved us
from our scheduled dock at Navy Pier). We should be home by dinner time
tomorrow. We’ll be home for about a month!
