July 2, 2015, Thursday, en route to the Panama Canal

More sea day activities.  We hava another guest French Chef, Claude Godard who has, among all his honors and accomplishments, a famous restaurant,  Madison Bistro in New York City.  Our artist in residence, Pat Grillo,

Our Vanderbilt certificate

showed us how to use a grid to copy a photo onto paper in order to paint it.  We got new needlepoint kits, and had a bridge lesson on defense against weak opening bids.

In the afternoon we played a special bridge game, the Insignia Vanderbilt Championship in honor of the 90th anniversary of Contract Bridge, created by Harold Vanderbilt who made a system of scoring which he used with friends on a trip through the Panama Canal.  His scoring table has had only minor changes to this day.  He added premiums for slams, vulnerability, and the decimal system of scoring which increased both trick and game values.  This added to the popularity of the game. He combined his love of Whist, Bridge, Auction Bridge, and Plafond, all part of the Whist family of card games. 

Vanderbilt  gave typed copies of the system to friends and it popularized itself like wildfire.  We got to play bridge, like Vanderbilt did 90 years ago, on a cruise through the Panama Canal.  I played with Harold, a seat of the pants player who has good instincts for the game.

Harold and I

Harry Chittick talked about the American involvement building the canal, and then showed another documentary Hydrotech:  Panama Canal.

The comedy and magic of Harry Maurer entertained us in the evening.