At Sea
The Mountain Laurel Autoharp Group (MLAG) is at it again and we’re off to sea. From our various locations across the USA we gathered at Fort Lauderdale to go on a cruise across the Atlantic Ocean on the MS Zuiderdam.
Our first destinations is the island of Horta, Portugal. It should take six days to get there. We boarded, went through our safety drill and met in the Hudson Room for orientation. There are about 67 of us in a passenger list of about 2,000.
Gregg and Shirley Averett have organized cruise trips many times for MLAG, the largest autoharp gathering on the planet and is designated as a 501 (C3) non-profit organization.
Autoharps, guitars, mountain dulcimers, bass, fiddles, percussion instruments and voices start singing at 8:30 p.m. each evening. The jam starts on time but may end…who knows when?
All musicians may participate. Everyone on ship is invited as a guest to sit and listen. This is going to be a fun trip!
MS Zuiderdam’s location after three days at sea.
The picture above is the official route map for the Zuiderdam on this voyage. Click on the picture to enlarge (or any other individual picture). Try to see the very thin route line. It’s very thin but you can make it out.
Pictures with dots beneath them are part of a slide show. Click on any particular dot to go to a specific picture. Hover your mouse over any such picture to pause a slide show. Pictures change every 4 seconds. Note: Some videos will take awhile to start playing because of their large file size.
On this fine day we were victims of nature. A gale was blowing as we passed the island of Horta, Portugal. The harbor master thought that the winds of 43 mph were a bit to much to launch tenders (boat shuttles). So we headed off to Ponta Delgado, Portugal. These are islands that many MLAG travelers have visited before on a previous trip going from Barcelona, Spain to Fort Lauderdale. We had an idea of what we were missing at Horta.
