A sailing day

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 Thurs. 9/ 27

Most of the day aboard ship—

We don’t dock at Mandrogy island until late afternoon, so there are Russian history lessons, Russian language lessons, and several movies scheduled for entertainment today, as well as a visit to the “wheel house” to see the captain.

A few impressions--- the cabin doors must be locked with a key, either from the outside or the inside.  A friend was taking a shower, her husband left to go to the vodka tasting party and locked the door.  She was trapped inside because there is no dead bolt knob inside.  She got assistance from her neighbor who went to the reception desk for another key. 

Meals while we are sailing are more “organized”.  We choose our menu for the next day, and sit with the same people for all 4 days on the river.  (And we enjoyed sharing information with the Millers)  At breakfast, service is buffet and seating is open.

There are bars on several decks.  Nick had a cappuccino in one yesterday that was 2.5 Euro.  These larger spaces are where meetings and lessons occur.  People who have rooms right under them, say that people are there all hours and that it can get pretty noisy to be that close.  Luckily our cabin is in the middle of deck 4—the one with the strange numbering system.

I mentioned lessons—the previous posts about dolls and amber were taken from those lessons.  There is a shop onboard that sells everything decorative a passenger could want-  The young couple who runs it speak very good English and have very good senses of humor.  They take Euro, Rubles, dollars, and of course credit cards.  Their business has been brisk.  –

Our visit to the wheel house (command center) of the ship was for the 30 of us on the same bus.  The 120 or so Collette passengers are divided into 4 groups for touring and explanation purposes.

We met the 1^st mate who was on duty at the time and he gave us information via our translator about the size and weight of the ship.  He mentioned that the wheel house crew works 4 hour shifts with 8 hours off and that the Captain is always on duty at night and when the navigation is tricky.  Navigation is done with the latest automatic guidance systems along with compasses and maps.  There are magnetic as well as gyro compases.

The capacity of the ship is 250 passengers and 100 crew.  The crew works every day for 6 months –April through September with no vacation or days off.   They have a full month off beginning the middle of October and then go back to working a shortened schedule to get the boat ready for the next season.  When they get rid of us on Monday Oct 1, the crew will sail for 10 days to get back to their winter homes.

The boat returns to its home in South Russia where it sits in a lake which will freeze over.  A very interesting adventure to the wheelhouse .