Again I felt like I didn’t sleep much, but despite waking up numerous times, going to bed at 8.00p.m. would surely have ensured I slept enough. As we lay in bed it really felt like the ship was rolling quite a lot and every now and then we’d hit a big wave and roll slightly more. In the morning though the sea was flat and we were scarcely rolling at all, perhaps we'd just imagined all that movement in the night. For breakfast we had our eggs with cucumber, with the little addition of tomato. There was grapefruit juice too; the juice has just started appearing at our breakfast table, Heinz Peter is grateful that we’re here. Apparently we’ve hit the Gulf Stream and the water temperature last night was a crazy 24’C. The Swiss couple are getting the swimming pool filled. Sailing in the Gulf Stream also pushes us along a bit. The steward was reprimanded by the captain for not having put the clock change sign on the door before breakfast. He hadn’t realised it was clock change day, so the captain led him to the calendar and circled all the dates the clock is changing with a thick red pen. Any confusion is to be blamed on the calendar, because it’s German. We’ve got just another five clock changes to go after today’s (and then we’ll have to regain one of the hours when we go back to England).
Seeing as it was calm and sunny we headed up to the bridge, discovered we were off the coast of Washington and stood outside. We then went to the ship’s front; sat around a bit and reconfirmed that it just isn’t as good for whale watching as the Hanjin Yantian. The view is obstructed by walls, but at least because it’s covered it’s not so windy. We also can’t see the bow, so there’s no potential for seeing dolphins riding on the bow wave. At the back of the boat there were hoses everywhere and we didn’t want to get in the way, so we headed to the officer’s recreation room to examine the DVD collection- lots of copies of films and documentaries in German, concerning themselves mostly with the largest ships of the world. 
Lunch was a potato, some brussel sprouts, a crown shaped cucumber piece atop a slice of tomato and almost the same vegetables as yesterday- celery and leek with sesame seeds. Beatrice, was really hot after eating her soup, she has a point-it is very hot inside this ship, must be Filipino temperatures. Apple pie provided a very nice dessert. 
Before dinner we played ping pong, went outside again and lazed. There is a dart board in the gym room, I imagine it must be really hard to hit the bull’s eye in a heavy seaway not to mention dangerous. I dread to think where the dart would end up if Valerie (my fellow volunteer in Churchill) were here. The evening’s meal was three blobs of mashed potato and bits of cauliflower, French beans, peas, carrots and a yellow vegetable, we added some tasty red cabbage salad. I thought it was high time in life to try some brown sauce, I wasn’t expecting it to be so much like Branston pickle. Small chunks of watermelon were a very nice dessert. We wanted to go and play ping pong but we thought someone was getting changed for the swimming pool, so instead we retired to our room to watch NDF’s ‘Mare TV’, the main documentary we found in our rummaging through the officer’s recreation room. I revisited St. Petersburg and California, but it was a bit too sea-rich. You would think that being at sea all the time they’d want to watch something about the land. People in California are crazy, there is a restaurant that serves food for dogs and strange people who push their dogs around in pushchairs, whatever happened to taking the dog for a walk?! It’s about 8.00p.m. and time for bed. This is allowed because of all the time changes to come, in Antwerp it would currently be 1.00a.m.
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