At Sea - Mar 25, 2013

A little diversion today due to an emergency medical evacuation causing us to change direction and drop a patient and his two passengers off at the island of Rhodes in Greece - the doctor was hoping the patient was going to be able to make it to Athens, but his situation worsened this morning resulting in our deviation. The ship was not able to get into port so they had to perform a water transfer which was very interesting to witness. The weather conditions were not ideal so it took some maneuvering on behalf of both ships to perform this transfer, all in it was about an hour. We are now back on our way to Athens, the captain is confident that with this particular ship we will make it to Athens at our scheduled time. Apparently when the MS Rotterdam was built, it was built heavy and with five engines - the same number used on the much larger ships. The result is that ship can easily run at 25 knots and with the additional weight can plow through the water easily. I will let you know how we made out. Our pictures today include some of the artwork on our ship as well as a few pictures of the evacuation. Tomorrow we are in Piraeus, Greece (gateway to Athens), we will be on our own and will be heading into the city on the Metro with our table mates - we are hoping for good weather as the temperate and conditions have certainly changed now that we are in the Mediterranean brrrr.