Day 51

Day 51 – Lisbon to Le Havre – Thursday 5/7/12

Weather – Cloudy 16C - 20C

Sunrise – 6.15am

Sunset – 9.21pm

Time difference - minus 9 hours ex Sydney

At 4pm Sun Princess passed Cabo Torinana (Finsterre) 22 miles starboard. Having transited the Finisterre traffic separation scheme on a northerly heading, once clear of it we altered course to the north east and continued through the Bay of Biscay. This are is quite busy with commercial shipping with lots of merchant ships and fishing vessels.

There are many different methods of commercial fishing, with the common methods in this area being stern trawling (towing a net at different depths below the water) and purse-seining (encircling fish within a net.

As we head north, the weather is cooling quite noticeably now. The sun did not make an appearance at all today, with heavy, but high, cloud cover. Strong winds buffeted the ship for most of the day, and the Promenade deck and top deck were closed all day and evening. With a bit of chop and swell in the sea, it actually feels like we are on a ship again, with some rolling and pitching, not very severe, but enough to bring out the sick bags :)

A sea day today, so as usual, not much to report, as we did our relax thing again, although Donna did do Zumba and Line Dancing back to back. I forgot to mention that we had slipped away from the daily Trivia a couple of weeks ago, it ceased to be fun when people started playing for sheep stations, and even marking spelling errors down as wrong answers...yep true !

Another well attended CC lunch today. It was a little sad to be saying farewell to those of the group getting off in Dover. We have about 30 of our CC group leaving us, and about 20 new CC folk joining us. The lunches have all been well attended, and we are so appreciative of Pam arranging them all.

The cool windy weather has brought more people inside, so the interior bars and lounges are quite full, and there seems to be more coffee and tea being drunk than grog.:) There is also a noticeable increase in the number of folk sniffling, sneezing and coughing, but you get that.