At Sea - lecture on the Concorde!

Wednesday, April 15, 2009 – Taxes are due! We’re sailing!
Slept late and ate late. Cloudy, sunny and perfect temperature. We passed a few islands but mostly just a day at sea.

Thoroughly enjoyed the lecture on “The Sound Barrier and Development of Concorde – a Technical Innovation” by Sr. Training Engineer Officer for British Airways Concorde, Ian Smith. (A big regret I have that I never flew the Concorde…)
The Concorde flew at 50,000 feet, had 100 seats, used four Rolls Royce engines, was 204 feet long and had an 83 foot wing span. It reached speeds of 1350 mpg, mach 2, two times the speed of sound. The first flight was in March 1962 and the first commercial flight was January 1976. The last flight was in November 2003 with a service time of 27 years and 9 months (why did I not fly it once??!). They had a three man crew (there was one woman Captain!). The first plane to exceed the speed of sound flew in 1948. A total of 20 planes were built by France and the UK and 14 were in regular service. It used 28,000 gallons of fuel with a 4,500 mile maximum range. Upon landing, the nose moves 5-12.5% down so the Captain can view the landing strip. The nose reaches a temperature of 261 degrees and the planes becomes 10 inches longer while in flight! He told a cute story of how one officer inserted a notebook in some of that newly created 10 inches of open space during the flight and by the time they landed, they could not retrieve the notebook. It had become “stuck” into the “lost” 10 inches of space. They had to wait until they were airborne again to retrieve it! Another cute story was about the carpet. They had to find a manufacturer who made a stretchy carpet – it had to stretch and shrink ten inches in-flight!

Cunard and Concorde had a special relationship. Sometimes the Captain of the Concorde would fly over the QE2 and both Captains would talk to each other and all passengers could listen. The Concorde Captain heard a huge boom and thought it was a huge crash. It turned out to be the sonic boom from the Concorde, which the Concorde officers had never heard before. It had been relayed to them via the telephone from the ship!

The two captains discussed menus and the Concorde Captain read theirs to the QE2 passengers. The QE2 Captain said that if he read their onboard menus, the Concorde would land before he was finished!

I worked on inventory and paperwork and we had the Royal Cunard Singers and Dancers in a matinee performance of “Hit Me With A Hot Note” and it was great. They seemed more bubbly and enthusiastic today. There are wonderful documentaries on TV…now we are seeing northern Spain and bullfights.

I came out of the internet area and a Scottish man (whom I do not know) said, “You have your requisite pile of papers with you, I see.” I looked at him and agreed. He asked what I could “possibly be doing with all those papers all the time” and more about Ensemble Travel. The entire conversation brought a smile to my face.

Entertained by Adrian Walsh, an Irish comedian, and he was really good.

Enjoyed the movie, “Mamma Mia” (AGAIN) at the 10:30 showing. There were approx. 8 of us in the audience! From just watching it about a month ago, it was still a fun movie!

Lectures: “Out of Egypt 1: The Alexander Romance”, “Gallipoli 1915, an important Allied Catastrophe”; Classical Concert with Violinist Harriet MacKenzie and Pianist Christina Lawrie