AT SEA EN ROUTE TO COCHIN, INDIA DAY III (3/24/2007)

From: Sherman Rootberg (BiggiRoot)
Date: Mar 24, 2007 12:52 PM
Subject: Saturday, March 24, 2007

Saturday, March 24, 2007

AT SEA EN ROUTE TO COCHIN, INDIA DAY III

About the time we were getting up this morning, I felt the movement of the ship to be unusual for the totally calm sea and the high speed we should have been doing. When I looked outside I could see we were moving very slowly, but nothing else unusual. I turned on the TV and waited for it to warm up.

All of these things were very hard to do as I had not peed yet and when I wake up I really have to. So, with my legs crossed I checked out first the channel with all the ship movement gauges and then the channel with the camera looking out the bow of the ship. The forward camera showed nothing but water. Then as I was looking outside I noticed land and mountains in the distance. There should not have been land on our side of the ship, only possibly on the opposite side.

Sure enough, the ships gauges showed us only going about 11 knots when we should have been doing about 20 knots. Then, when the screen changed to the page with the direction of travel, it showed us headed at about 90 degrees. That’s due east and we should have been traveling straight west.

Now we knew, for sure, something unusual had to be happening. Right about then the intercom starts beeping its coming on signal. The captain comes on and apologies for bothering everyone at this very early hour. He announces that he thought we might want to know why we have slowed so much out in the middle of the of the Ocean. He says it is because the ship hit something and we are going to sink. No he didn’t. I just wanted to see if you were paying attention. He did say that we were stopping to let off a tender to go up to some of the many little fishing boats in the waters around us and try to purchase some fish for lunch.

Actually, the boat they let down was a small one with an outboard. It is located right below our cabin. Several of the crew, including the head chef, boarded the craft and it was lowered into the sea. We could see it go up to several of the small fishing boats and try to barter for fish. The first one had only one large fish. They bartered for it and finally handed over a carton of cigarettes to pay for the large fish. Several other small boats came along side. They had mostly Tuna and wanted cash for the fish.

Quite a bit was purchased and it made for a great lunch up on deck, but we didn’t attend.

Even though all the excitement was going on, we went down to breakfast. Shortly after we entered the main restaurant, I spotted a very large school of fish bounding out of the water as they swam by. I had seen this many times and knew they were Tuna. Many people thought they were seeing Dolphin. Dolphin are almost never seen in such large numbers and are not all of the same size if small ones are present.

Later this evening we were sitting in the main restaurant for dinner. The captain was walking by and strangely had to stop and talk to us. He asked if we had seen the dolphin this morning. I said that I though they were tuna. I had never seen so many dolphin together and they seemed small for dolphin. He said no, they were small dolphin. As I think about it, I am even more sure that I saw fish and not dolphin. There would be large dolphin caring for the small ones and the small ones would not all be swimming together. Either the captain is mistaken or there are some kind of small weird acting dolphin, in great numbers, in these waters. I wish we could have gotten pictures.

For lunch they had grilled tuna up on the pool deck. I don’t like grilled tuna so we passed it.

Right about now I might mention that our bathtub is totally over filled. If Bobbi buys any more junk I will have to see if I can rent someone else’s tub.