Underway

 Underway

I spent Friday at Belfast's newly created Titanic Quarter, once the center of shipbuilding in the city. Today, the area that was desolate six years ago when I last visited, has been transformed into a vibrant entertainment and living district
centered around the ultra modern Titanic Museum. The building is at the location of the defunct Harland and Wolf shipyard where the Titanic was built. It is surrounded by the refurbished remnants of the shipbuilding industry including two gigantic
cranes named Samson and Goliath that are today only occasionally used to assemble windmills to power Europe. The museum is a state-of-the-art facility that concentrates on the history of Belfast shipbuilding, particularly the building of the
Titanic.  While it doesn't gloss over the sinking, it minimizes it.  After all, the unofficial motto of Belfast is "she was floating when she left here". To burn off the rest of my English money, I went back to the central city and took in a movie
in a beautiful, modern multiplex cinema equal to any at home.  I returned to the ship by curfew, saying goodbye to a great city and resting up for departure and work.

We shoved off about 09:00 on Sunday, mooring for training at the mouth of Belfast harbor until about 19:00.  We are now underway, heading south through the Irish Sea to the Mediterranean and our next port
of Split, Croatia.

Rich Delbango
Ship's Librarian