There are pluses and minuses to the digital and DVD revolution. Now we have this fantastic DVD library that is building every trip. This encourages all crewmembers to get their laptops up and running and check out movies at theirleisure - in their rooms. I haven’t sat with an engineer or brother deck officer and watched a movie all trip! There is a lounge with 8 beautiful lounge chairs that get almost no use- that I can see so far. Its good- and its bad. My “reading” this trip has been Crabwalk by Gunter Grass. Also J sent me the World is Flat on CD. I am at CD #5. I want to travel to India with J and see if she can use the accounting revolution there to lighten her load. She SHOULD be overseeing a staff of well trained Indian Accountants rather than doing all the “heavy lifting” herself.

Here are the distances involved on this trip and the times between ports:

Charleston - Algeciras, Spain 3712 NM 9 D 9 Hrs
Algeciras - Alexandria, Egypt 1809 NM 4 D 14 Hrs
Alex - Haifa, Israel 298 NM 18 Hrs
Haifa - Izmir, Turkey 648 NM 1 D 15 Hrs
Izmir - Gioia Tauro, Italy 665 NM 1D 16 Hrs
Gioaa Tauro - NY/NJ 4372 NM 11D 11 Hrs

We are currently about 8 hrs behind schedule but C/M advises we could be right back on schedule if they deploy two cranes to our ship in Alex.