It was a whale of a day! But I'm getting ahead of myself. After the morning interdenominational service, there was the BBC game show with all new questions and then we went to the Crow's Nest to read and watch for wildlife. After lunch in the Lido (we skipped the Indonesian lunch in our he main dining room), I went to the daily bridge and weather lecture presented by the second officer. Captain Baijens then presented a PowerPoint virtual tour of the bridge plus photos of the Volendam in its last dry dock. This was followed by a lecture on Quantum Mechanics which was changing to keep up with. Afterwards we watched for wild life from a now familiar spot in the Crow's Nest. We saw a few whale spouts plus we sailed alongside Unalaska (Dutch Harbor). After a short break for a Lido dinner, we resumed our whale watch.
And were we rewarded. For almost 3 hours it was a continual display of spouting whales, breaching orcas, dolphins and the like, this continued all the way through the Unimak Pass which is an 8 mile wide channel. It was very busy with shipping traffic and we saw 4 large cargo vessels including one huge log transport ship. All we're headed towards Japan via the great circle route. We also had terrific views of Mt. Pogromni at 6568 feet and Mt. Shishaldin at 9372 feet. Both are inactive volcanoes and the whole Aleutian Island chain was formed by volcanic activity.
We watched the 10pm performance of the Alley Cats and then the Phillipino crew member show which was as well attended as any of these crew shows. It was a full house.
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