Sun, 3/16/25   At Sea

Day 70 - Sunday, March 16th, 2025 – Day at Sea

Last night when we got back there was an envelope underneath the door. It was strange because we get so much paper, but this one was in an envelope with nothing on the outside. Mary opened it and found an invitation to visit the bridge in the morning. It asked us not to share this invitation with others, so that's probably why it was in the envelope. Apparently, it is an event that they do not offer widely. Only later did we remember that we signed up for a bridge tour when we were at the cruise specialist cocktail party Somehow the crew specialist team was able to set up this event.

Because we had to be on the 12th floor forward at 10:00 we decided to have breakfast in the room. I had a breakfast sandwich which was pretty good. I also had two hash Browns. I don't know what Mary had.

Because we were not sure exactly where we needed to go, we left a little early. I had a pretty good idea of where we needed to be but I wasn't sure. We made our way all the way up through the Princess theater on 7. From there we took the elevators up to 12. When we got off the elevators there were about 15 other people there already. Princess security checked our names and we waited.

At 10:00 we were escorted down the long hallway towards the front of the ship. Behind two locked doors, we entered the bridge. If you’ve ever seen a bridge on a ship you know that they extend beyond the width of the ship. That's what this was like. It is a long room of maybe 16 feet wide with glass everywhere. If you were standing in the middle of the room you can probably see somewhere near 200°. The glass in front is slanted so you can see down, forward and up. That is the first thing you notice. You can see out into the sea forever in almost every direction except behind you, obviously. In my mind I thought it would be a cramped room with a lot of equipment. In reality, it is a console of maybe 5 feet by 4 feet at either end. In the center there is a longer console of probably 20 feet by 6 feet. Beyond that, it's open space. These consoles are obviously where the action happens. You can see from the pictures that they are pretty complex. With that said, I was surprised at how uncomplicated they look. We've all seen pictures of the inside of an airplane. The pilots got 200 switches and dials and sliders and whatever else. These consoles allow the operator to say go forward at this speed or go backwards at this speed and head in this direction. There are fancy things like side thrusters. Beyond that, there are computer screens showing all kinds of different information. That's pretty much it. I guess in hindsight I wonder what I was thinking but what else do you need to know? Forward, backward, right, left.

One of the officers, I don't remember his name or what his title was, talked to us for about 30 minutes explaining everything that we saw on the console and the screens. He talked about things like pulling up to a pier, how the pilot gets on board, etcetera. The one thing I did find interesting is that in the center there are actually 3 consoles that are essentially the same. They are colored green, yellow and red. Green is staffed hen the ship is in the open sea and just cruising forward. They are probably in some nasty weather when an extra set of eyes are needed so both green and yellow are staffed. When things are crazy and or they are going in or out of port all three consoles are staffed. They need all the eyes they can get to make sure that everything is as they need it to be. The captain is always at the red. I'm sure it's not this simple, but he's only needed when the times are tough.

I don't know that we captured them in the picture, but there are two people, they're called helmsmen, that do nothing but stare out into the sea and look for things that shouldn't be there. The guy giving the lecture said that it might be things like garbage piles or fishing nets or barrels. It's one of those jobs that sounds boring as hell and cool at the same time.

We were able to wander around for a good half hour after the discussion. We talked to the other officers on the bridge. We were able to wander around and look at everything. Mary got countless pictures of course. It was a very cool experience. We might be the only 20 people of the 2000 on the ship that got this opportunity. If so, that makes it extra cool.

From the bridge we went to 14. Mary had some tea and I had a cup of coffee. Two sticky buns jumped at me while we were going by. Mary has some cranberry bread or something. That's why we don't go to the buffet. We eat too much stuff we shouldn't. I worked on the crossword puzzle while we sat up there. We decided to go down to the cabin. On the way back, we stopped at the casino and put our names in for the 130 tournament.

We went down about 1:15 to play cards. Mary got knocked out 8th I think it was. I made it to 1st place. Actually the guy named Gary and I split first place. It was a good 212 dollars. Mary was up doing her classes while I played cards. We went back up to the room until dinner.

For dinner I had the Chardonnay I've been drinking recently. We both had the brie in puff pastry appetizer. We both had the double salad. I have the San Francisco Stew. Mary had roast chicken. For dessert, I had brie and gouda. Mary had chocolate sorbet. As always, it was a good dinner.

There was a comedian on at 7:30. We agreed to go back to the room and get some stuff accomplished. Mary is working on her classes. I played cards and worked on the log. I feel like I'm finally catching up a little. It was a good day made special doing something that was very unique. Another successful day.