Art class has just finished. I have found a seat in a huge leather wrap-around armchair in the Crow's Nest Lounge which is high on the bow at the top of the ship, deck 13. I've pulled the chair up to the glass wall in front of me and it is as if I am perched right over the sizeable white-capped swell six stories below. It's quite mesmerising. I have a book but I find I cannot look away from the sea which today seems limitless. The sky outside is cloudless blue but the wind is high and right off Antarctica to the south, so it's a cold wind….. if you can get out of it, like some have, you can sunbathe, but otherwise, the woollies are back on…..

The ocean is huge here. No land in sight. Nothing to be seen in any direction except the rolling swell and the occasional albatross. The Falklands are about 300 miles to the south east of us. Today I can appreciate how truly remote they are and how far from any -any- other landmass. Now that I am here, in this limitless sea-space, it seems right to me that they should choose their own fate. True, they are a long, long way from Mother England but they certainly do not stand to Argentina in the position of, say, Gibraltar to Spain or Hong Kong to China.

We are in a huge stabilised ship and heading more or less into the swell, so there is very little roll or motion, just the odd creak or juddering jar if we hit a particularly large trough. I cannot help but reflect on how different it must have been for those nineteenth century mariners in their relatively tiny ships setting out to go around the Horn, with uncertain charts, no radar and no one to help in any case. I think of Captain Jack Aubrey in The Far Side of the World, when this area truly was the "far side of the world…." Or in our own time, to be here, to have lost your yacht and be adrift here in a tiny life-raft. A tiny dot hoping against hope to be spotted by a passing miracle. Short of being marooned on the moon, it must be the loneliest place imaginable.

And then just to prove me wrong, a pod of dolphins races alongside us for a while. Jumping in the bow wave, skimming past us at an incredible speed. We are doing 19 knots and they caught us so very fast, easily overtaking us, shooting past with the odd jump just to show how very superior they are!

Tomorrow afternoon we will arrive at the entrance to the Straits of Magellan and will spend the rest of the day cruising those waters till we reach Punta Arenas, Chile late that night. Hopefully we will be lucky enough to see some of the many species of birds and sea creatures that inhabit the Straits. Camera is at the ready!

On a more humorous note, after two weeks, we have managed to identify some of the "characters" on this ship. A Selection for you: of course there is the crazy, drunken 80+ year old who accosted Bob(amongst others) and is spending the entire voyage in an alcoholic daze having been issued with a written warning for smoking in her cabin and - wait for this - throwing her knickers onstage at The Opera Boys. Can you imagine? ROFL…. Then there is the dwarfish, reputedly titled couple, both again in their 80s, both with dyed fox red hair and in the case of the lady, the longest, most gummed up false eyelashes ever seen, and a make up job made famous by Heath Ledger in Batman….. she gives the husband a dog's life, he pushes her around hopelessly while she viciously berates him waving her stick for extra emphasis. Lastly, the Japanese gentleman, clearly bald, who owns two - TWO - of the worst wigs ever made: one for day and one for night. Sort of Dennis the Menace jobs, so stick-up they make him look as though he's put his finger in a power socket. And of course - as with all bad wigs - they are jet black and you can see his own wispy grey remnant around the neckline. They are so remarkably bad, I actually spotted him first clear across the width of the theatre. He must be confined to barracks in any sort of wind like today. And I confess to a fantasising about him the other night concerning his wig getting too near the Gaucho entertainer with the flaming whip. If only…… Sailing on.... back tomorrow