An interesting day. Gorgeous weather for a start. Very warm sun, blue skies and hardly a breeze. The sea has been very very calm all day. Oddly enough much calmer here in the Atlantic than it was in the Caribbean.

We lay out on the top deck and sunbathed with our books all morning. Both so brown now. After lunch we went to art class and finished painting the Little Gardener. Really pleased with the results. I can't believe we've painted something as fiddly as this. It would have thrown us into a complete panic a couple of months ago.

Good news from Lu. The freehold sale has now been completed and that was the last hold up before exchange of contracts for her. So hopefully a few more days should see her able to plan her move. Fingers crossed.

Some passenger updates. MT is still aboard and an ongoing mystery. Some days she is dressed in nun's attire with black glasses and a white stick. Other days and certainly evenings she appears in quite sheer and glamorous getups with no glasses in sight! The very talkative Ozzie lady is also still aboard. I had a little chuckle to myself at lunchtime as I noticed she had discovered her dream lunch companion. There is a little (literally) lady aboard who for whatever reason cannot speak. Chatalot had cornered her and was giving her chapter and verse on her life story "and then in July 1983 we came back to the UK and then 2 months later….." etc which we know all too well goes on beyond an hour of nonstop talking.

We had some more swims after art and then retired down to the cabin before dinner. We were just watching Cinderalla Man on the tv when the lights flashed and the film went off. El Capitano then came on the tannoy and announced that there was nothing to be alarmed about but that we had just lost engine power and they were trying to get it back and not to be alarmed by the black smoke that was billowing out of the funnel!!!!! YIKES! After about 20 minutes he came back and said they'd got one engine back online and were still working on the other…..nothing to be worried about etc etc. Lucky it's so calm out here miles from anywhere and with no other ship in sight!!! Then they got the other one going again too and back at full speed ahead. Don't know what had happened, maybe we'll find out.

Had cocktails up on deck and watched the sun set and then went into dinner. A nice table, good chat. Great end to the evening as the Headliners were back in the theatre with one of their truly excellent shows. We really enjoyed it as usual. Have missed them being on at night as we have had a lot of guest artists. They are better than most of them to be honest.