Day 41 At Sea

At sea again and the sun is still sizzling. The wind was pretty strong when I went out this morning so I kept looking for the best place to sit. First I set about the task of trying to put my lounge chair back together (they fall apart and have to be reassembled….. (Remember my previous section on Holland America’s terrible lounge chairs). After much frustration, I finally decided to go to the area I retreat to when I need a lot of protection from the wind. The only problem was that I was sucking fumes of some sort. It was giving me a headache and burning my eyes. I called the front desk and asked for the environmental officer to check out what was going on. He showed up about a half hour later and I asked him what it was. It turns out that he couldn’t smell anything. This was a result of too many years of Rugby. With the help of another Engineer it was determined I was sucking fumes from one of the engine exhausts. In all the time I have spent cruising I have never seen a problem like this. The fumes pretty much covered the entire aft section, decks 8, 9 & 10. I finally went to the corner of deck 9 when was on the “upwind” side (strong wind at that) to get out of the exhaust. This was fine for me for a few hours until a crew member got into some serious painting behind me. After awhile he apparently screwed something up and was using liberal amounts of paint thinner to fix it. This was really overpowering so I finally packed it up for the day. This was not Holland America’s best day at providing first class service (My headache still is with me). Aside from the respiratory issues the day was fantastic. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day for breathing.