We anchored just around the corner from Killarney last night and spent the nice in a peaceful cove. This morning we woke up to a lot of wind and rain. The captain decided to move the ship to a more sheltered area and this consequently changed the schedule all around. The plan for today was a zodiac ride, a visit with an Indian tribe and a barbecue lunch off shore. All excursions were cancelled except the zodiac ride. It had rained so much, the Indian tribe coming from Killarney could not make it along with the barbecue lunch as they could only travel by boat to get here. They pushed back our zodiac ride to a little later. Nana (always the adventurous) decided she would go on the zodiac ride no matter what. Since Papa has been on the zodiac many times, he decided to stay at home and stay dry. As Nana was leaving, I started to have regrets because it was nice and sunny. Well that changed in less than 15 minutes and a large storm came racing through and hit our ship as well as the zodiacs. I was very happy to be on the dry ship, Nana though had the time of her life……. She did have to goto the spa to warm up though…… See the video below of the storm coming so quickly. It is so interesting to see the weather patterns here. The video below is a 2x speed which means that storm came in about 2 minutes. Papa loves to watch the storms develop and happen.

Since we had our barbecue cancelled, they had a special lunch for us on board the ship. Lobster rolls and the normal fare along with a champagne drink…. as much you wanted. Some interesting facts that my friend from ND, John, told me, over the course of two weeks, Viking serves over 5,000 lobster tails. While we had lobster rolls today, you can get lobster tails every single night in the World Cafe. Each tail is somewhere between 8-9 ounces each. That is a lot of lobster. We were also entertained by the contemporary duo with some wonderful songs. I was confused when they said barbecue becuase I was thinking like a Southerner and thinking of pulled pork, baked beans, and barbecue sauce. What they meant was that they were cooking out hot dogs and hamburgers. Different words mean different things depending on what part of the work you are in. When I lived in Ohio, I though barbecue was cooking out, now that I live in Georgia, I think of barbecue as pork or chicken seasoned.

After lunch, the sun came out and I decided to go on a zodiac tour into the fjord. It was a wonderful trip, we saw a beaver home and viewed many rock formations. A storm started to creep on us but our zodiac driver didn’t let it catch us. The wind had picked up to about 22 knots this afternoon, so we did some spray on the way back and a lot of us got wet.

This afternoon they opened up the bridge for a tour. I took some special movies for my Uncle Pat, a retired tug boat captain and very familiar with the ships that ply the Great Lakes. It is unbelievalbe how automated the ship is and how much technology is on the bridge. We are the middle of the bay and the ship is automatically adjusting itself (without any anchors) to maintain it’s exact position. The crew has positioned the ship to protect the loading and unloading doors for the zodiac away from the wind. This allows for a much smoother getting on and off the zodiacs. The ship uses pods at the stern of the boat that can be rotated 360 degrees and has 3 bow thrusters. With this 5 blades the ship can maintain any position. Below is a long video and the officers talking about the bridge and how it works.