Neptune's Crab Cakes

So I was sitting down for dinner at 1700, enjoying an odd combination of
crab cake, linguini with spicy thai peanut sauce – it was doing wonders to
cure my latent sea disease (notice I don’t say sickness – this was a sea
disease). I was then joined by an older Merchant Marine Captain who
worked on the Liberty Ships that ran cargo to the U.S.S.R. during World
War II. I asked him something to the effect of, “Comparatively speaking,
how would you rate the seas we just ran through to some of the waters
you’ve been through.”

He gave sort of a chuckle at this and furnished the reply I had expected,
“Son, this was nothing.”

He then proceeded to tell me how he used to run cargo to Murmansk in 100
foot seas. The seas we were in were 10 foot.

*sigh*

I think at this point, we can safely say everything is back on track. The
students are using the library again and I have some regulars. We should
be raising the Azores over the weekend, so I’d like to get some photos of
those islands, as well as when we get to the Straights of Gibraltar.

The cadets seem mostly positive though I think the recent low pressure
system took some pep out of them and I would not be the least bit
surprised to some of these kids get into trouble once we hit port.

Most of my reference questions at this point seem to now be focusing on
our first port of call. I mentioned to one cadet that I was going to
write up a port handout when he requested the following two pieces of
critical information:
1) Where is the nearest bar?
2) Where is the nearest strip club?

Here, my bibliographic skills only allow me to bat .500 since Fodor’s and
Frommers do have where to go out to get drinks, they do not mention any
strip clubs. In fact, I would know how to go about finding a strip club
in Spain, if they exist – I would think strip clubs exist in all cultures
though maybe not to the same level of tawdriness. In any event, the
drinking age in Spain is 18, and of course they all been warned.

Anyway, I digress.

Tonight’s movies were the Will Ferrell comedy “Step Brothers” and also
“Gran Torino.” Personally I like Taladega Nights better than Step
Brothers and I didn’t see Gran Torino. I got the movies for the next
week written out already and put in a few that were requested by the
cadets…

5/15/2010 Wedding Crashers Public Enemies
5/16/2010 Kill Bill vol 1 Kill Bill vol 2
5/17/2010 Domino Anchorman
5/18/2010 7 Days Andalucia Sherlock Holmes
5/19/2010 Borat District 9
5/20/2010 The Blind Side Death at a Funeral



Please note that “Death at a Funeral” is the British version which was
extremely funny.

Most of my time the last couple of days besides dealing with my sea
disease has been bungeeing. No, I do not mean I was bungeeing from the
side of the ship, but bungeeing everything in the library from the
destructive trident of Neptune. It of course doesn’t prevent whole scale
destruction when we hit a good roll!

In fact, when it gets rough, everything gets lashed down and our meals are
served on the actual messdeck (i.e. where the cadets eat as opposed to
officers). The reason for this is because from the messdeck to the
officer mess there is approximately a 65 step staircase one must traverse
in order to get up to the auxiliary kitchen. The dumbwaiter, which
attaches the two kitchens, is an even dumberwaiter since it is broken and
a boy from the kitchens below has to haul up everything by hand (remember
there is no elevator on the “Empire State VI”).

The food in general has been palatable, but I know that my girlfriend
would undoubtedly find problems with their croissants. I actually haven’t
had anything that made me go crazy over it. It’s been good, but not
great, although many people have said that the food on the cruises was
excellent. Maybe they just don’t know how to cook.

Fair Winds and Following Seas,
Joe