Oh, we were blessed last night with no fog! And no f’ing foghorn.  Thank heavens, finally, a decent night’s sleep.  We have also been blessed with smooth seas.  Only 1-meter swells, which by morning have subsided to barely anything.  Happy sailing across the North Atlantic Sea, at least for now.

Our normal morning proceeds – up early at the gym, and of course there are people there waiting to get in with us.  Tale of 2 cruises.  Somebody in a robe (we are assuming he is in one of the spa suites) comes out from the closed doors and says its open, there is just no one there.  Well, yeah, duh, it isn’t 7am yet.  But, hey, you do what you do – so in we go, meeting the gym manager guy on the way, chatting with him as we secure our treadmills.  And good thing too, because within minutes the place is full.  Last cruise?  Nah, we were 2 of only 3 on those machines.  Ah well, it’s what we expected really.

After our normal morning routines, we hit the Living Room to blog, read and listen to trivia – it is packed up there and we don’t even bother to get points for listening!  We don’t need anymore t-shirts, to be honest.  Around 11, we try for the Brunch – and this time are successful – even at our “own” table #4.  Vicson tells us “our table” is available, and Joel practically runs to escort us there.  Too sweet.  Brunch is good – but weirdly no officers are there – at all.  Last time they were all there.  Plus, no shrimp.  Hmmmm…Otherwise, all was good – ham, waffles, and the bananas have shown up. Yay.

Captain’s announcement at noon is sort of what we thought – there is weather coming.  He is currently sailing fast to stay in the good weather, but by tomorrow morning we’ll have 4-meter swells and 50 knot winds, the ship will be listing toward Port.  Pill time!  Oh, and they are still going to have White Night tomorrow night!  As Captain Dario puts it, it won’t be like a Caribbean White Night!  Nope, it won’t!  He’s actually going to go around and enter Prince Christian Sound from the west instead of the east for a better evening event.  Not that we care, we’re in Prime C.  At least it should be calm.

Later, at 2, Dr. Jannie talks about Greenland to a packed house.  Wow.  Barely a seat to be had.  She covers the island itself: 836,330 square miles; the official name is Kalaallit Nunaat; it is the world’s largest island that is not a continent; 2/3 lies above the arctic circle; 80% of the island is covered by ice sheet, the 2^nd largest in the world (following Antarctica of course), in some areas the sheet can be 5,000 feet thick; they have the world’s largest national park; only 40 inhabitants live in the whole vast northeast area. The white and red flag represents the ice cap (white background), the sea (the red below the white), the sun (red half circle) and icebergs (white half circle). Greenland’s coat of arms is appropriately the polar bear – with it’s left arm raised because the Innuit believe polar bears are left handed. The island has a total population of 56,000, all along the coast, the only inhabitable area, mostly Innuit Danish with 10% full Danish.  Fun facts:  The Innuits believe that the Aurora Borealis is the spirit of children who died at birth – they are dancing in heaven – making the appearance of the Northern Lights a happy, celebration phenomenon. 

By about 2:30 we start feeling a little bit more of the swells.  Not too badly, but we’re starting to move.  Here we go………       

Still in the Cabaret – probably not the best place to be with swells and pitch and roll, but what else can we do if we want to hear the lectures.  One of the new lecturers, Dr. Hal Tinberg, a biological chemist and R&D manager for a lab who has been lecturing about DNA Forensics on cruise ships since 2007, talks about “A Death in Iceland – The Birna Brjansdottir Murder.”  Oh yeah! Right up my alley!  He starts off with a little background about Iceland and policing:  they have no standing army; are protected by NATO; have 90,000 firearms in the country used for hunting; the Police are unarmed; there are 664 uniformed police in the country with 138 detectives; there is only 1 forensic pathologist on the island and no forensic DNA laboratory, DNA must be tested elsewhere, mostly flown out to the FBI in Quantico. Iceland is the 3^rd safest country in the world, with only 1.6 homicides per year. Between 1999 and 2019 there were 37 murders, mostly involving spouses, or friends or acquaintances. The first time in nation’s history the police shot someone was in 2013. 

With that, he launches into the 2017 crime that changed Iceland forever. Before this, people never locked their doors, trusted everyone.  Then the disappearance of this girl just haunted everyone.  A Financial Crimes detective got assigned the case after one of Birna’s friends and her mother pressed for police action when she didn’t show up for work after a long night out. All the detective had to work with were 40 CCTV cameras, some of which didn’t even work.  The case ended up being the largest missing person search in Iceland history including the Coast Guard, police, search and rescue – over 2000 people looking for her.  They eventually caught the guys who abducted and killed her, sailors on a transport ship, the one who actually did the deed is now in prison. But it was amazing how they managed to piece everything together with minimal forensics systems available to them.  Totally interesting!

Later, the Captain makes an announcement explaining that we will be entering the sound from the West instead of the normal East sailing.  This to avoid the worst of the weather.  He also makes sure we all know the seas will get rougher overnight and then from 5a to 10a tomorrow morning they will be worsening before we get out of this system.  Dramamine night for me! 

As promised, the seas are getting a little choppier by around 4ish, so we skip the gym this evening and just hit The Den for pre-dinner drinks (coz it is lower and more mid-ship than the Living Room – and the bar servers actually comment on the fact we are here and not up there – we don’t have a routine or anything do we?) and up to Aqualina where they do have Dover Sole!  Bonus, they are using the new menu finally.  Dinner was excellent and took a long time, which was fine by us as we decided not to go to the Comedian Magician show and just head back to the cabin to watch more Netflix.  Perfect for me, my non-seaworthy legs and Dramamine.