I’ve spent maybe 100 days at sea, and this was the first and only time I’ve seen the ocean so calm and glassy that it was able to reflect the clouds in the sky.

This photo was made from the balcony on the 6th floor of the Holland America cruise ship Noordam one day out of port from Fort Lauderdale, Florida heading towards Caribbean islands.

Those colorful orange boats below our cabin are the ship’s life boats. The also serve as tenders from the ship to smaller ports that can’t hold the larger cruise ships. While I hope to never ride in of the life boats during an actual evacuation of the ship, riding in them to port isn’t much fun either. The boats hold over 100 people in a small area, offer very little air circulation, and on hot and humid days that are quite common in the Caribbean tend to “pre-cook” you before reaching your island destination.