December 07, 2008 – At Sea

We woke up before 6:00am because there was dead silence and no sense of motion and when we looked outside we were dead in the water. There was no electricity or water and we opened the curtains for light so we dressed and went up to deck 11 where several others were loitering around. Fortunately the water was smooth as glass, the sun was shining and the temperature was mild. Capt John came over to us on his way back to the bridge and said it was a power failure of unknown causes but he wouldn’t make any announcement that early with most guests still asleep. The emergency generator on deck 11 was running to provide emergency lighting and essential communication but the propulsion engines were shut down because, without electricity, hydraulic pumps to operate rudders etc were out of commission. We were in sight of land but hadn’t yet dropped anchor. We used the time for a deck walk and around and after about an hour of stillness the generators came back on line, the main engines started up and we were on our way. We’ll find out later if the delay will affect our planned stop in Fortaleza tomorrow. The outage had actually started at 5:00am and lasted for nearly 2 hours. There were two additional partial outages later in the morning. Unfortunately the air conditioning and toilets don’t work when there’s no power (the toilets are on a vacuum system like you see in airliners.) Captain John later reported that there is a single water cooling system for the main generators and that was what had failed. Due to the delays, we will bypass Fortaleza; however there isn’t much to do there with only a 4 hour stop so it was the best port to have to miss.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful; we played Pooch and won trivia in the afternoon. For dinner we had a table for 6 in Portofino’s which had a Brazilian churrascaria menu. There was a large buffet of appetizers (enough to be a whole meal) and, following the appetizers, waiters came around with meat grilled on the back deck. The meat was skewered on swords and served onto your plate if you wanted it. There was chicken, lobster, prawn, sausage swordfish and several varieties of beef. Desert was also on a buffet for those who had room. It was all delicious and overly filling. We were the last to leave the restaurant, missed the show (which was a repeat) and ended the evening conversing with friends in the Navigator lounge.