Does a ship need a pool? In the past, no. Passengers walked the wooden decks hour after hour. They played shuffleboard. They climbed relentiously up and down stairs between decks. Then small pools appeared. They got bigger and bigger and today the bigger (and more vulgar?) the vessel the more waterchutes and other play things are required.
SS Splendor, a three year-old beauty in the RSSC fleet, has ten decks, up to deck 14 (OK, you work that out, you mathematicians). The ship is 735 feet long by 102 feet beam. It carries 746 guests in 375 suites, plus a crew of 567.
Deck 11 has the main pool, above. A shallow extension has inset water beds, and there are two adequately-hot jacuzzis, conveniently near the popular pool bar for regular supplies of ice-cold beers to be brought over. BUT, unknown to the masses, there is a second pool, an infinity beauty cantilevered off the stern of deck five, behind the spa. There’s a viewing floor above, in the sixth floor Technogym, so you can look down at clever people who have found this ‘secret’ pool. Yhey generally lean over the stern, looking down at the wake below.
Girlahead finds wake-watching absolutely mesmerising. The wake leaves the ship as a clear white line, quickly to separate into more and more mini wakes, losing its whiteness with every second. Eventually, long before the horizon, the wake disappears. Forever. There must be a moral in there somehow.
But the needs to be specific and to the point are, when one is at sea, like a wake. They become less and less obvious. Perhaps, on a round-the-world cruise, they disappear altogether?
