Today we got to play with a few of the toys Octantis keeps in the hanger of its lowest deck. They include Zodiac rib boats, kayaks, a 40-foot long special operation boat and even two small submarines. It was our turn to explore this marine park with the Zodiac and submarine. We enjoyed it, though we had mixed results.

Fun fact: we couldn’t launch any of the ship’s boats until we were in Canadian waters. This is because even these tiny vessels fall under the terms of the U.S. Jones Act. It states that any boat carrying merchandise solely in the U.S. must be U.S. owned, registered, crewed and built. So we couldn’t use the Viking boats in the U.S. And how does Viking get away with sailing its big ship in the U.S., you may ask? Its cruise began in Toronto, Canada, so the Jones act doesn’t apply. But U.S. authorities ruled that even the kayaks launched from the Octantis were separate cruising vessels and each trip on a kayak that began and ended in the U.S. must follow the Jones Act rules. Sigh!

Our afternoon outing was a experience on the ship’s 7-passenger submarine. Octantis has two, named John and Paul. It’s sister ship, Polaris, named their subs George and Ringo. And they are yellow. Get it?

And then…. Disappointment! The sonar system for the submarine became unstable and our captain aborted the mission. So we didn’t get to actually explore the seabed or the wall with the fossils and sea life. But we did get the experience of going down on the submarine and we hope to be able to do it again soon.