Olympic Madness

It's hard to imagine a more electric atmosphere than the one that was on the MV Explorer yesterday as students, faculty and staff competed in the Sea Olympics, beginning with the "sea feud"--based on the idea of family feud.  One category, for example asked "what is the one thing that you should not forget to bring with you to the ship.  Answers given were "underwear and cameras" by the first groups, but the answer most given by students in a poll was "your passport".

Then it got a little more physical with "crab soccer" and "hula" hoop--that required participants to play toss and then hula hoop on one leg.

The Crab soccer looked like a contact sport to me.

One event that brought tears of laughter to many of us was the "singing SASers", a lip sync contest that featured at least two Michael Jackson groups and the "spice girls (not)".

The other most anticipated event was the "synchronized swimming".

The 7th deck was packed with cheerleaders, and the teams delivered.

The final event of the day was a relay race made up of different components including the "chug a strange concoction", leapfrog, human wheelbarrow, and my personal favorite--the book find.  I competed in the book find as the "ringer" for our team, but found that I was competing with several of our student assistants. The previous leg came into the library and had to take off the team t-shirt, and I had to (struggle to ) put it on.  I found my book quickly but was 2 min behind when I got the "baton" and in spite of one of the fastest walks to the next station (no running allowed), we never caught up.  This only added to the earlier humiliation in the "pirates pull", a tug of war.  The winning team had about a 350 lb advantage over all the other teams, and they were acknowledged as "beasts".

All great fun with the closing ceremonies awarding the gold medal to the "red sea".  Congratulations to the tema that now gets to leave the ship first in Ft. Lauderdale.

Today also gave the ship crew the chance to practice a "man overboard" drill.  This was re-assuring to watch.  Then while the ship was stopped, we  "parked" for about 3 more hours so that we could time our arrival at the Nicobar Islands at 7 am the next morning, allowing everyone (who got up) a view of the islands that were so devastated by the 2004 tsunami.

We had a dinner of grilled hamburgers and barbecued ribs followed by a lot of commotion on the pool deck, follwed by a lot of people filing by wearing wet clothes.  I decided to not pursue that event.