November 11, 2026

Day 3

Wednesday

Veterans Day in the US; Remembrance Day elsewhere

At sea, in the Atlantic Ocean

The usual sea day- reset and relax. We changed cruise directors in Miami and now John Ekin is the cruise director. He was on the world cruise for sometime and we really don’t like him. He was on another cruise when Mike & Maddie were with us. When we were playing trivia, he kept giving hints so everyone would know the answer. He is really full of himself.

The downside of having him as cruise director is that he doesn’t see in benefit of having a morning stretch and mobility class. He probably thinks we should all go to the morning stretch class in the gym at 07:00. We will have to do chair yoga in the suite. At least we have that on our iPads.

We headed to the Constellation Theater on deck 5 to hear the lecture “Caribbean Islands: Where did they come from and where are they going? with Dr. Peter Bobrowshy. This lecture was much better, but still not as good as some of them on the world cruise. He focused on the geology of islands and the different types of islands. And then talked about those here in the Caribbean.

The Caribbean is a vast area containing over 7,000 islands, cays and reefs. Islands are classified or generally categorized by their formation process, crustal types, and origins along the Caribbean plate and the areas of tectonic interaction. The major classifications are:

Volcanic Arc Islands, both active and inactive in the Caribbean. These are formed by those places where the South American and North American tectonic plates are sliding beneath the Caribbean plate/ Guadeloupe, Martinique and St. Vincent islands in the Inner Lesser Antilles, are volcanic arc islands which feature both active or recent volcanism. There are older volcanic cores, such as the interior mountain ranges of Puerto Rico and Cuba, and other parts of the Greater Antilles.

Limestone and Karst Islands. Islands formed from ancient coral reefs, marine sediment accumulation and uplifted carbonate platforms. The Bahamas is an example of this; it sits on a massive, shallow-water carbonate platform rather then on the main tectonic plate. Cockpit Country in Jamaica, parts of Cuba, the the northern lowlands of Puerto Rico feature prominent karst topography such as sinkholes, caves, and limestone hills.

Barbados, our next stop, is a prime example of what is called an accretionary prism or subduction island. This occurs when one tectonic plate interacts with another and layers of marine sediment, mud, sand, and chalk are scrapped off the plate descending under another and these soils are uplifted above sea level.  

Cuban Hispaniola and Jamaica and other parts of the Greater Antilles feature complex mixtures of ancient metamorphic rocks, igneous cores, serpentinite belts, and folded sedimentary basins which have resulted from prolonged microplate compression and tectonic activity between the North American and South American tectonic plates. These are called continental fragments and complex orogenic belts.

The main geographic divisions are:

The Greater Antilles: The larger islands located in the northwest, including Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola (charged by Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and Puerto Rico.

The Lesser Antilles: The smaller arc of islands stretching to the east and south, split into the Leeward Islands of Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kitts and Nevis Anguilla, and the Virgin Islands, and the Windward Islands of Dominica, St Lucia, Barbados and Grenada.

The Lucayan Archipelago which include the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Then there are the Dutch-affiliated ABC islands just off the coast of South America – Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao.  

The rest of the day was filled with meals, naps, cigars and general relaxing. We skipped Dr. Woodward’s afternoon lecture. Mary had her hair conditioned. She went to the needle point class – it wasn’t for her. We were supposed to meet up for afternoon tea at 16:00 but we missed each other. I did find out they have gluten free scones at afternoon tea. I had one and it was’t “bad”, however neither was it great. The clotted cream and strawberry jam did make it possible to eat.

Dinner in Sette Mari on deck 11. Then a cigar and off to bed.

Buonanotte e ciao,

Enrico e Maria