Today was a much-needed Sea Day on the Yi Dun Ship. We have been on the go for about a week, and have not had a chance to rest at all. Of course, I was up at 6:00 AM anyway, and I got dressed and headed down to get my morning coffee at The Library Bar while Stephanie slept. I was not able to take my computer with me, I had forgotten to plug it in to charge it last night, so I just got my coffee and a cream cheese-filled donut and relaxed. I would just have to do my blog work back in the room today, but I enjoyed sitting and relaxing with my coffee. I skipped the Latte today, it was possible that the cream or milk in it had caused some of my stomach issues yesterday morning. I normally drink just plain black coffee, and that is what I ordered today.
After a bit, I headed back to the room to wake up Stephanie so we could get some breakfast.
We went up to the breakfast buffet and while we were eating, the Captain made an announcement that we were not having a sea day today, at least not all day and all night. There is a Typhoon to the south of Taiwan, and it is heading north towards us. Because of this, the ship is accelerating its speed to arrive at the port of Zhoushan tonight around 5:30 PM instead of tomorrow morning. We will only be staying long enough to be able to go to a nighttime show there that was one of the included excursions there. It is called The Impressions of Putuo, and it is an outdoor show using the nearby mountains as a backdrop.
There are going to be two different departure times for the show based on the deck numbers for cabin locations. There were 6:45 PM and 7:00 PM meeting times tonight for the buses to the show, and we are scheduled for the 7:00 PM departure.
The ship will be leaving Zhoushan at 11:00 PM tonight and heading south to Xiamen to go into the port there and stay overnight while the typhoon passes. This will mean we have a sea day tomorrow instead of the port day we were scheduled to have in Zhoushan.
Because of this change, we will be skipping the port of Dongtou altogether, which was scheduled for two days from today. After spending the night at the Xiamen port, we will head back north to the port of Pingtan, one of the originally scheduled ports.
This was all due to the predictions of high winds and rough seas in the Taiwan Strait, which is a relatively narrow passage of water between Taiwan and Mainland China.
This plan is also based on the port of Xiamen remaining open until we arrive, there is a possibility it will be closed due to the winds from the Typhoon. This was disappointing, but we understood the need for safety, and who does not like sea days, we do!!
After breakfast, we went back to the cabin so I could work on the blog posts with the computer plugged in. There was a special lunch being served on Deck 7 at the pool today, as well as the Captain’s Reception, and we wanted to go to those later.
Around noon, we headed up one floor to the lunch being served on Deck 7 out by the pool area. They were serving some traditional Chinese food. One was a whole fish, but we could not tell what the other one was. We opted to get two hamburgers from the grill instead, it was right here by the pool, so we could still see and hear everything going on. There was some entertainment in the form of a guitar and singing performed by a husband and wife duo, and we enjoyed our hamburgers at a table by the pool listening to them.
A short time later, the Cruise Director came out onto the stage and introduced the Captain. The Captain welcomed us all and then made the same announcement about the itinerary change we had heard earlier, but he also had some slides projected on the large TV screen behind the stage showing the location and expected path of the Typhoon, as well as the winds and wave predictions for the next couple of days.
After going over the new Itinerary and reasons why we had to make changes, the Captain brought out his senior staff and they all individually introduced themselves, and told us what they did and where they were from.
Once that was complete, they left the stage and the singing duo came back for more entertainment.
We did not stay much longer, heading out to the rear of the ship to enjoy the sunshine.
The seas were not bad today, and with all of the sunshine and blue skies, it was hard to believe we were heading into such bad weather. Of course, the ship was going pretty fast compared to first thing this morning when we were just creeping along. We were now going to be at the port of Zhoushan in just a few hours instead of taking all day and all night on the original schedule.
We were also having some issues at home as a result of Hurricane Helene passing nearby the other day. Our house was still without power, and there was no schedule from the power company, Dominion Energy, on when it might be back on. It has been around 36 hours so far, and we are reaching or already have reached the point where things in the refrigerator would not last much longer, same for the freezer. Since we are not there, we can’t do anything about it. We do not have much that will be ruined, but it will need to be removed and thrown away if the power is out much longer, otherwise, it will make the refrigerator and freezer stink.
The other more serious issue is the lake level and our pontoon boat in the lift. We had not raised it up all the way for this trip because the lake was already a few feet lower than normal, and we had not expected the storm or the amount of rain that fell. Without power, we can’t raise the boat. We could see the lake level was rising still from some online lake level tracking. We were developing a plan for our house sitter Michelle for raising the boat in the event the power does come back on. but it will be a race of lake level versus power restoration.
We will also need to think of an alternate plan if the power does not come on before the boat starts to float on the lift. We have our neighbor Mike, and we were planning on asking him to tie off the boat in the lift and raise the engine so that if the lake continues to rise, the boat will not drift off if it floats. There is no other choice. We need to lift the engine so it will not hit the cross beams underneath if the boat floats and moves forward. If the lake level rises far enough to float the boat entirely, we could have Mike move it over to the dock and just tie it off.
Part of the problem is that with the 12-hour time difference, we only have a small window of time to communicate live. Since it is the afternoon here, it is early morning at home and we will have to wait until tonight to try and get Mike to check out the pontoon boat. It will be 7:00 AM if we send him a text at 7:00 PM tonight. It is a little agonizing to just have to wait, not knowing where the lake level is in relation to the current height of the boat in the lift. I was kicking myself for not raising it some more before we left, it was on our list of things to do, but since the lake was already low, I did not want the boat to the too high in the lift either, it gets blown around by the wind more when it is too high in the lift.
We had a couple of glasses of wine during the afternoon, just enjoying the good weather before our arrival in Zhoushan. We will need to get something to eat before we leave for the show in Zhoushan at 7:00 PM, and they were opening the buffet a little earlier tonight to accommodate people needing to eat earlier to make the show schedule.
Stephanie had signed us up for a tile painting class this afternoon at 2:30 PM. We had no idea what this was other then the very descriptive name. We headed to the restaurant used for the Chef’s Table and joined our class. There were 4-5 people sitting at each table, and we were supposed to paint bamboo onto a white tile with green paint. The paint was in a small squeeze bottle. Our instructor showed us how to squeeze out the paint in long rows on our tile, and then use the rounded corner of a plastic card, the ones they had were old cruise cards, and spread the bead of paint out to make it look like stalks of bamboo. Then he showed us how to use a small paint brush to make the leaves. There was an example tile on each table we could use as a guide for how ours was supposed to look.
Making the stalks was the hardest part, it took a certain width of paint and technique to make it look right, we had only one shot. The leaves were a little easier, but that also took a certain technique. We are not art painters, so we were struggling, but at the end, they looked alright. We took them back to the cabin to let them dry, of course, now we had to carry them home.
We did watch our long and slow approach to the port. As we got closer to land, the water really turned muddy, which usually means there is a large river flowing into the ocean here.
The port was quite a ways in from the ocean, and there were a couple of lighthouses along the rocky shoreline. It had turned a little cloudy by this point in time, and there was a possibility of some rain showers later tonight, so we were going to take our rain jackets and umbrellas with us to the outdoor show. After the ship tied up to the pier, we could see some young men playing some drums and symbols on the pier, and there were two people in Dragon costumes dancing to the music.
Around 5:15 PM, we headed to the World Cafe for some dinner. We were not sure how many people were going to the show, but we presumed it was going to be most of the passengers. We only have 340 passengers on this cruise, so the ship is pretty empty, and that is fine with us, there have been no crowds for any of the dinners or lunches and we have not had any problems getting a table in the buffet.
After eating, we headed back to the cabin to get ready for our 7:00 PM departure. I was debating on wearing shorts or long pants, mostly concerned about the possibility of biting bugs. I changed into long pants, but we could see people heading to the first buses and a lot of men were in shorts, as well as some of the Viking guides, so I changed back into my shorts. We put our umbrellas and rain jackets into our backpack and headed to deck 2 to depart the ship and head to the waiting buses.
It was quite hot and humid outside, and it had apparently rained some while we were eating dinner, adding to the steaminess. We were trying to wait on our friends Suzie and Michael to try and go to the show with them, but it was nearly impossible, there was nowhere to wait. There was not much room on Deck 2, and once we were outside, they were directing everyone to the buses, they did not seem willing to let us just hang around.
We got on Bus No. 8, and headed to the The Impressions of Putuo show, which was about a 15-minute drive away. Once we arrived and were about to get off the bus, it started raining. It was just a shower at first, but then turned into a fairly heavy rain, so we were now trying to get into our rain jackets while we were waiting under the covered area by the bus. They also had “raincoats” for anyone who needed one, they were really clear yellow ponchos, but the sides were closed. By the time everyone in our group got into their rain gear or into the very difficult-to-put-on ponchos, the rain stopped.
When we entered the gate to the show, everyone was given a plastic lotus flower with a plastic battery powered lighted candle in the middle. The lighted candle rotated through several colors. This flower was to be used at the end of the show, we were supposed to release them to float in a small lake, or, we could keep them. We walked about 10 minutes to the show stage, and on the way, everyone had to cleanse their hands at a wash station attended by people who looked like monks, and they would using a long-handled ladle to pour water over our hands to wash them, apparently a Buddhist ritual. From there we were taken over to the stage and we asked for two of the provided raincoats/ponchos to use to sit on, the seats were all wet from the rain we had earlier.
The show was scheduled to start at 7:40 PM. We were seated in the middle section, and about 15 rows back from the front. There were some signs that said this was a special section set aside for cruise visitors. There were also other people attending the show besides the Viking cruise passengers, and they were seated on the sides and higher up behind us.
It was pretty hot and steamy in the seats, we had not taken off our rain jackets yet since we were to sure if the rain was finished. Between sitting on the plastic ponchos and wearing our rain gear jackets, we were getting really hot and sweaty. I was glad I had worn shorts. We took off the jackets and it was better, but there was not much of a breeze.
The show started on time, and it was very colorful and the way the lighting was done in the background against the mountains was very pretty. The front part of the stage directly in front of the seats and all of the seating were on a rotating platform, and as the show progressed, we rotated through some different scenes with different backdrops. They had given us a program before the show started and we never thought about looking at it until after the show was over. There was some explanation of the different scenes of the show in English in the program. Of course, the entire show was in Chinese, so we did not understand anything that was said.
Luckily, it did not rain anymore, and we could see some stars in the sky. As we rotated through some of the scenes, we got a better breeze and it helped to cool things off. Towards the end of the show, everyone was invited to go up and get into a line to present their lotus flowers and candles into a pond to float away, it was supposed to be part of a Buddhist Ritual to pray for anything you wished for before letting the flower go into the water. We opted not to participate in that ritual, thinking it was not something we believed in and was not part of our Catholic faith. We just kept our flowers and candles as souvenirs.
We were allowed to leave and head back to the waiting buses while most everyone else that was participating in the flower release stayed behind. We never did see exactly what happened with the flowers, everyone was still in a long line when we left.
We arrived back to the area where the buses were waiting, but missed getting on the first one, even though it was not quite full, but they directed us the the next bus in the line and we got on. Of course, we now had to wait until this bus was mostly full, so that took a bit. The initial crowd that had left with us filled the first bus, and now there were just a few people arriving sporadically, so it took about 10 minutes for the bus to be full enough to leave.
It was about a 15-minute ride back to the ship, and during that time, our Viking Guide told us some things about Buddhism, It was interesting but she struggled with her English and was constantly saying OK, at the end of sentences, at the beginning of sentences and many places in between. It was her way to pause to think of what she was trying to say in English.
We arrived back at the ship and headed to the elevated gangway. There were two lines of staff form the ship lined up to greet us as we walked by. It was funny, but they were having a good time, they probably liked that they were outside and off the ship even if for a short time.
We dropped off all of our rain gear at the room and then headed up to the Explorer’s Bar to get a glass of wine and relax. The ship was not scheduled to leave until 11:00 PM, so we had about an hour to wait.
The ship was starting to move, so we headed back to the cabin with a glass of wine to watch the sail away form there. The Pilot Boat was waiting for us after we had been underway about 10 minutes, and then it followed along side of the ship for about 10 more minutes, and it did not look like a fun ride, it was a little rough and even though this was a large pilot boat, it was bouncing in the wake of the ship.
Eventually, the ship slowed down and two men came out onto the front deck of the Pilot Boat by two tall vertical poles. They held on there as the pilot boat tried to get close to the ship. Then, the pilot on our ship sort of jumped over to the two men and they grabbed him and he was safely aboard, but it looked scary to us.
We were soon underway and up to full speed after dropping off the pilot. It was about 11:30 PM and we headed inside to go to sleep.
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