The Final day of transmission with the big reveal of how the girls had done.
We had three big broadcasts to do from the aft end of the ship.
The ship was cruising from the Ionian Sea into the Mediterranean.
There was no land in sight. Just miles and miles of deep blue sea.
Today was the day that was the second worry day because the ship was moving. Ian once again had the job of keeping the dish locked on to the satellite.
In theory it should be an easyish job.
In practice it was not that easy but Ian did it with consummate skill
The Captain helped a little by keeping the ship on a steady perfectly straight course.
The hits all went off well from a technical point of view.
Simon the Director and I had great fun with the little workouts we did.
We came off air pleased with what went out and some of the stuff that didn’t.
The work wasn’t finished. There were still a few things to pre record.
We all wanted a little bit of free time so we got it done as quickly as we could.
Then there was a bit of time getting things derigged and packing away.
At lunch there was some sushi on the menu. Along side it was a huge dish of wasabi.
The implication was that it was quite mild. We all took fairly large amounts.
That was a bit of a mistake. Even the macho Mr Motivator living on a diet of very hot Jamaican Jerk Chicken was taken by surprise.
When Deanne arrived and got quite excited about there being sushi on the buffet I said to her that the wasabi was quite mild and to pile it on.
She was spooning it on to her plate. The couple behind her in the queue expressed their surprise.
She told them not to worry because she had it on good authority that it was very mild.
The two Simons and I could hardly contain our giggles as she sat at the table with a heap of wasabi that gave of enough heat to power a small town.
We tried to carry on a normal conversation as we surreptitiously watched her smear the small pieces of sushi with the green fire lighter paste.
She popped it into her mouth and continued to chat away as normal.
The three of us waited for the eruption.
She took another piece and lobbed more wasabi on and munched away on that.
There was no sign of the least distress.
The three of were thinking, “This can’t be right!”.
A third piece liberally coated with so much wasabi it looked like a coating of green icing went in and still no reaction.
As she started piling more on another bit of sushi I started to say, “Well I have to say that that you have out machoed us b....”.
I was on the word boys when this time, at last she reacted in the way we had expected.
I don’t know how Simon managed to hold the camera steady what with all the laughing, but he managed to capture the moment.
She’s a good sport and laughed along with us when she got her breath back.
In the afternoon once the kit had been packed away. We had time to relax.
I managed to lay in the lovely sunshine for the first time this week. It was just for 45mins.
Then James one of the Engineering Officers on the ships crew had been helping us all week and had become another member of our crew.
All us boys got very excited when he offered to give us a tour of the engine room and the behind the scenes parts of the ship.
As soon as we stepped through the door leading us out of the hotel there was no carpet, just metal deck floors, big heavy doors with impressive handles, steep flights of steps and pipes all over the place it really felt like a ship.
We were all in full geek mode as James gave us lots detail about the ship and showed us the massive area that the public never see.
The cameras were out but sadly we bumped into the Chief Engineer. He told us that we could not take pictures because a lot of what we were seeing could be of use to nutters that might want to harm the ship in some way.
I suppose an American ship full of nearly 5ooo if you include passengers and crew, most westerners. It could make quite a juicy target for an organisation like Al Qieda.
It was an amazing experience. I never realised that the ships engines don’t actually drive the ship what they do is generate the electricity to power motors that drive the ship.
There is lots of purification and recycling that goes on.
The sewage is bacterially processed into a drinkable state and then it is pumped away to sea.
The ship makes its own fresh water from sea water.
By the time we had finished the tour it was time for a very nice final multi-course meal in on of the posh restaurants.
Simon and I had to do a bit of ironing of our shirts to make ourselves a little bit presentable.
Lots of the other passengers were in full evening dress and the crew were all wearing their number one dress
Simon Getting Domestic.
The evening wore on to the early hours as we danced the night away in the Skywalker night club.
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