Today we were the furthest away from land as we can be on this crossing. 750 NM. or almost two days of sailing. 750 NM translates into 870 land miles, as you have to multiply a nautical mile by 1.16 to get it converted to a statue mile. We were 750 NM away from the Azores, and about 800 miles away from Nova Scotia and the same from the Bermuda’s. The weather is still holding and the wind is now blowing with us and as a result the gentle pitching of the ship has changed to a rolling motion that we can stop with the stabilizers.

Stabilizers can only help against the rolling (that is the side ways movement of the vessel) and not against pitching (that is the up and down movement of the bow). A stabilizer gets its effectiveness from the water flow over the fin and its ability to create an upward or downward force because of it. In a similar way as you can see flaps moving on an airplane wing during take off and landing. The faster the ship goes, the better the stabilizers work. They do not take away the complete rolling movement but dampens it down by about 90%.

The sea bottom under us is called the Sohm Abyssal Plain, a relative flat area of the sea bottom. This will change when tomorrow evening we start approaching the Azores. The Azores are mountain tops located on a ridge near the Mid Atlantic ridge. The Mid Atlantic ridge is a cleft in the sea bottom, where the European Teutonic plate meets the American. (the names are slightly different, but they are the plates that carry the specific continents)

A German scientist, Mr. Wegener figured out in the 1880’s that the continents are drifting apart by means of plates moving over the Earths core. The European plate is slowly going under at the Mid Atlantic Ridge and the American plate is surfacing there. The American plate is disappearing on the West of the Rocky Mountains at a ridge that we know as the St. Andreas fault.

The collisions of those plates there, are causing all the earthquakes. Where plates meet, there is a gap in the earths crust and thus volcanic action. So most volcano’s are found in area’s that border the edge of a plate. If one would go down to the bottom of the ocean at the Mid Atlantic ridge, one could observe volcanic action in various forms. (my apologies to any expert who reads this blog as I am trying to avoid going into too much detail and there is much more detailed info available on the internet)

The ship is gearing up for Easter, and various things are planned to make it a special day. As a cruise is to be a period of enjoyment, we grab everything excuse there is to throw a party or at least do something out of the ordinary. Special morning services are planned, egg hunts in combination with Bingo, special egg baskets in the ship, an Easter Bonnet contest etc etc., and the internet café is offering an Easter special to call or email home. Our cadet is hoping for a proper egg hunt as he is used to that at home, him coming from a large British Family. I told him to get dressed up as an Easter bunny, so now we have to wait and see if he takes it seriously.