We now know a bit more about the two rowers we picked up in the middle of the night. They are two 23 year old young men who were participating in a rowing race across the Atlantic. The cruise director has interviewed them and the interview has been shown on our onboard TV. Dressed in their new Ralph Lauren outfits supplied by the shipboard boutique they explained graphically the freak wave which capsized them and their struggle to free the tiny life raft which was caught underneath the overturned boat and then drifting for 10 hours in the dark with no way of knowing if their distress beacon was working. When asked if they thought they were going to die, both said no----ah, youth!
One is English and the other is Dutch born but both privately educated in England at an international outward bound school and then at Edinburgh University, both very good looking, articulate, and well-brought-up. They are being lionised by everyone on board. A PR god-send for Crystal Cruises--the story has gained international coverage and a movie is being talked about. you couldn't have made up a better script. Imagine, though, if they had been two 55-year-old Kazakh-speaking stevedores! Or if the first ship on the scene to rescue them had been a Venezuelan oil tanker!
Our days are passing in a haze of too much food and drink and too little exercise. Tomorrow after five days at sea we reach St Martin.
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