Day 35 – At Sea

Newcomers…

Every time the ship reaches the end of a ‘leg’ of our grand voyage, a whole bunch of passengers disembark and a whole new crowd gets on board. The last time this happened was in Rio yesterday, when 400 passengers disembarked and were replaced with 400 new ones. Although this probably sounds like a negligible event, barely worthy of mentioning, it is surprising how much it changes the dynamic on board. It means that people you have formed fledgling friendships with suddenly disappear, never to be seen again, and are replaced by a crowd of strangers, bumbling around the ship with their lily white legs and lost expressions.

Some of these newcomers require to be initiated into ship etiquette by those of us who joined in Hamburg or Southampton! For example it is very poor form to hog a deck chair or sun bed (even if you ARE German) and is not to be tolerated! 😜 Furthermore, being too hasty to whisk a chair from under someone who has only just stood up is also unacceptable. Piling one’s plate too high with food is dreadfully uncouth, as is swigging beer at 10 am. Talking too loudly around the pool or in the Commodore Club (you Americans know who you are) will attract reproachful glares, and sneezing in the theatre or attempting to push into the queue for the coach are crimes worthy of nothing less than a prison sentence.

So here we go again, with a fifth of the original passengers replaced, and the new ones like first years at school, ripe for a bit of ‘educating’ by us seasoned sailors. 😆