At Sea on the way to Iceland

Wednesday 24^th and Thursday 25^th August 2016

We have 2 days at sea between Bergen and our first stop in Iceland, but fortunately, there are lots of activities to keep us busy.

On Wednesday there are two guest lecturer presentations, one of which on the land and People of Iceland was excellent, the other one on Life in the Northern Forests was OK, but not riveting.

The weather has been drizzling most of the day, with a bit of rock and roll on the boat in the morning as we were side on to the swell, but it seemed to settle down in the afternoon. The seas are relatively flat. The temperature is starting to drop as we head further North and for most of today the outside temperature was around 13 C.

On Thursday we woke early as there was a bright sunrise at 4.50am.  We closed the curtains to block it out but never really got back to sleep.

Today is a busier day with a lecture from the location guide at 10 am, providing information on the ports we will be visiting in Iceland and Greenland. With the exception of Reykjavik , there are all quite small towns with 3 of them requiring tenders to go ashore. We are still deciding what to do with tours in Iceland, as we see no value in the Holland America organized tours and are having trouble getting independent tour operators in Iceland to respond to emails. We may just end up organizing something at the port.

At 11am, the “brunch” for people who have chalked up enough points in the Mariners Club to get an invite. The brunch, is a 3 course lunch, which was very nice if not a bit early, and sparkling wine was provided.

After lunch, at 1.30pm, a ceremony was held on the pool deck to celebrate the crossing of the Arctic Circle (which we not actually do until 8.30pm tonight), but nevertheless it seemed to be a good excuse for a party. Volunteers were sought to take the Polar Bear plunge into the pool to celebrate the occasion, for which they would receive a certificate. I was amazed at the number of people who volunteered.

It all started with an ice carving demonstration

The Polar Bears at the pool were dressed for the occasion

After the usual incantation to the Norse gods of the sea, they all jumped into the pool, to which some ice was added just in case it wasn’t cool enough.

The Ice Cream stall seemed to be more popular than the ceremony

At 2.30pm, there was another guest lecture that was supposed to be on Volcanoes, but covered the ports we are visiting in Iceland with some overlap on what we had already seen this morning. The presenter lives in Iceland, so there was a bit more of a local perspective in the presentation.

It is another misty day, with not a lot of sunshine and the temperature is now down to 10 C. The fog horn is working pretty hard this afternoon as we sailed into a thick sea fog for several hours.

We are hoping for better weather tomorrow in Akureyri.

Internet access at sea is non existent, as we appear to be too far North for whatever system the ship is using. We are hoping for some onshore access tomorrow.