Sailing Through Time

We are now three hours ahead our everyday Greek world and some 13 hours beyond our old world time as the ship makes its way across the Indian Ocean.

It is as if we are sailing through time.

I didn’t appreciate this ocean and all the countries to which it is a gateway before this ‘voyage of discovery’ as I am now calling our cruise. We will have moved forward six time zones when our journey is done and will have barely touched upon all the diverse worlds it connects.

The Indian Ocean is the third largest in the world at 26,469,900 square miles. It’s waters include the Andaman, Arabian Flores, Java and Red Seas as well as the Bay of Bengal, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman, Mozambique Channel, Persian Gulf and the Great Australian Bight.

Since leaving Cape Town 14 days ago, we’ve traveled just under 5,000 nautical miles. The distances between ports of call are significant; something difficult to imagine until you’ve spent multiple days at sea. It is taking four days simply to get from our last stop Mauritius to the Maldives (our next stop).

At noon each sea day the captain’s announcement includes the location of the nearest land, sometimes hundreds of nautical miles away other times surprisingly close. Invariably it is some island we’ve never heard of and are not able to spot with the naked eye.

Unlike the early day explorers who were at the mercy of the winds and waves, our ship can travel up to 18 knots, propelled by two diesel electric motors and four Warsilla engines. It is guided by radar and everyone on board who chooses to be in touch with the rest of the world can do so thanks to Starlink.

Ship crew members makes sure that our travel days, called sea days, are filled with enrichment and learning, health improvement, and exercise opportunities. Evenings are filled with social gatherings and enterinment. However it is easy to spend hours doing nothing more than savoring the sea on which we are traveling.

When sailing through time, as we are, the journey is as amazing as the destination.