Thursday - Day 21 - almost Heimaey

(Astute blog readers may note that the day count changed from day 19 to day 21 -- we didn't skip day 20 -- I messed up the day count back on Grundarfjordur and the network is too slow for me to go back and fix it now!) 

On Thursday, we were scheduled to stop at Haimaey, Westman Islands, Iceland...

We arrived early in the morning, and, by 8am,

...five tender boats were out and anticipating taking passengers ashore. But... if you look closely, you might see that they are at differing angles to each other with regard to the surface of the sea, as they were being bounced around quite vigorously. The captain had tried to get the ship positioned so the tender platform would be in the lee of the ship, but even with that, water was washing over the platform (not a good thing for lots of older adults to deal with when attempting to board the tenders). In addition, the weather was predicted to worsen during the day... so Captain Timmers decided, for safety of crew and passengers, to cancel this port stop.

It was very very foggy -- had been for most of the night of sailing as the fog horn was going off regularly as we traveled. In the picture above, you may be able to see small areas of white -- that's where the waves were hitting the cliffs that were right next to our ship. It was disconcerting that we couldn't see the shore at all, but knew that it was very close -- we were glad that the captain could keep us away from the rocky cliffs at our sides.

One of the tenders (again, the fog was so dense that it looks blurry) -- you may be able to see 3 crew members (two in front, one on top) with their heads out as they prepared to head back to the tender hooks to bring the lifeboats back onboard.

We went up to breakfast (as did many others) -- 

I went to get hot water for tea and was surprised to find a sign on the hot water dispenser, "Brewing in Progress"! Who knew that hot water had to be brewed! (I'm sure it was heating.)

After the decision was made to skip Heimaey, the cruise director and crew quickly turned their plans to finding how they could entertain the passengers on this unexpected (bonus) sea day...

Astronomer Tom Vassos quickly was scheduled on the World Stage at 10am to do a talk -- he had gathered a few photographs from other places of the preceding day's solar eclipse - this one from Spain that had been named NASA's Astronomy Photo of the Day for August 13.

Tom Vassos then continued with a bonus presentation that he had put together (I'm certain that he had it as an additional presentation "just in case" of a situation like this) -- on Time Travel as seen in movies and as theorized in science.

Other than that presentation, we didn't do much other than rest and eat! Carl has been struggling with back pain (it seems to be a nerve bundle that is experiencing pressure from a bulging disc in his back and causing numbness in his right arm and a lot of pain) -- it flared up as we traveled from the US to London 4 weeks ago, but had quieted in the last week. It has now flared up again, and we're trying to figure out what we need to do about it in the short term (manage the pain so he can do things he wants to do on the trip) and what we should do about it in the long term (pain management doctor or other care when we get back to Mesa). We're praying and seeking wisdom and a solution.

Later in the day, we had a letter from Captain Timmers relating the decision to cancel the port call at Heimaey.

I'm thinking that cruising has a lot of commonality with RVing, you need to be flexible to having plans change due to circumstances outside of your control on a daily/hourly basis!