In the early hours of the morning, the ship was involved in a maritime rescue mission. At around 10pm last night (while we were enjoying our island night deck party) the ship received notification that a nearby yacht had an injured member of their crew that needed to be evacuated.

As the ship was the closest vessel to the yacht, it was bound by maritime law to offer assistance . A rescue helicopter from one of the nearby islands tried to airlift the injured crew member on to the ship but due to some high winds we had last night, they weren't able to do it. This meant that the crew from our ship needed to try to assist the yacht directly, so in the very early hours of the morning, the ship launched one of the high speed boats to go and get the injured yachtsman.

The rescue worked and the person is being cared for by the medical staff on board until they are off loaded at Colon and before we go through the Panama Canal.

While I wasn’t really sure what was happening at the time, I had a feeling that some thing wasn’t right. At about 1:30am, I woke up and noticed that the ship wasn’t moving right (normally you can feel the vibration from the engine or a little bit of ocean movement). Then there was an announcement through the cabin intercom 'This is the bridge, stretcher crew to report to medical centre’. This just added intrigue to the whole night and left me wondering whether I needed to get up and investigate/turn on the TV for the bridge cam. I decided that was ever was happening, we’ll either be told about through the ship’s scuttlebutt system or via an official message – it ended up being via an announcement by the captain.

After hearing from the captain we were glad that our cabin is at the pointy end of the ship and not the blunt end. As they were trying to use a helicopter to rescue the injured crewman and the original plan was to deliver him on to the ship using the upper open deck space, passengers from several decks at the back end of the ship were moved out of their cabins in the early hours of the morning and moved to the theatre on deck 7. I believe they were well looked after but there were a few sleepy looking people walking around for the rest of the day.

After the morning’s excitement, the remainder of the day was fairly ordinary –Zumba and choir practice.

The other highlight of the day was the production of a poster to show during our Panama Canal transit tomorrow. Unfortunately we left our run a little late and were faced with limited option in terms of paint, markers, glitter and glue. I think what we pulled together is pretty good for a quick effort.

Fun fact:
The Caribbean’s deepest point is the Cayman trough. Located between the Cayman Islands and Jamaica, the bottom of it is 7,686m below sea level.