Thursday, February 27^th, 2020

At Sea

Ruth has been home for 9 days now, and still has problems with getting back to her regular sleep routine, and recovering from her arduous journey home. Brian has settled well into our new time zone despite the fact that we both keep on being woken up in the middle of the night by phone calls on our cell phones. We can’t turn the phones off as we need to be available for family and work reasons, but getting a call at 3:00 AM about extending my vehicle warranty is annoying, especially as I have frequently told them that my car has done over 250,000 miles and to stop calling me. It just doesn’t work. Ignoring them doesn’t seem to help either. Luckily there is nothing to stop me sleeping in on sea days whilst Brian is at the gym.

There are several children on board, who are very well behaved and delightful to talk to about their experience of doing a world cruise. One of the children decided that if the grownups could have auctions, then there should be an auction of the children’s artwork, with the proceeds being donated to charity.

So in the Queens Room this morning there was an art auction, with a pirate in attendance, looking remarkably like Captain Hashmi. The auction raised over $1,100 for charity. Congratulations to the resourceful youngsters on board!

We spent this afternoon navigating our way though the shallow passages between the islands of the Torres Strait. There are at least 274 islands in the region. Captain Ian Perry gave a commentary on what was going on as we slowly made our way through the straits, trying to avoid reefs and sand banks.

One of the islands is called Post Office Island. Years ago ships would leave mail there, which would then be picked up by passing ships and taken to their destinations. The ships leaving the mail would also leave a bottle of brandy or rum as a gesture of thanks.

It was magical to watch us slowly glide through the calm, shallow, turquoise water. I hadn’t realized that we would be doing this, so it was a real treat.

It was difficult to hear the commentary from deck 14 which is our usual favorite place for watching what’s happening, so I ended up watching our progress from the front of the ship on deck 7, near the spare propellers. Here the view was good, and the commentary easy to be heard. The other advantage was we could see flying fish and turtles.

Some of the islands are inhabited, and we could see little fishing boats in the distance.

With land so close I checked my phone, and sure enough there was cellular service for a brief period of time. I went on Facebook and there was a posting that the reveal of the name of the new ship was going to be on April 20^th. Alas, not at our World Voyage Gala, but we will be on Queen Mary 2 at the time, so that should be exciting.

There was a follow up meeting to the hijacked Cruise Critic meeting last week. This was not a Cruise Critic meeting but a get together for people to criticize how Cunard was dealing with our current situation. I chose not to go as I was concerned that it might just be a lot of people complaining and shouting at each other, and I preferred to experience the once in a life time experience of us effortlessly gliding through a beautiful, serene, part of the world.

I think I made the right choice. Speaking with friends who went to the meeting the main concerns continue to be compensation for missed ports, and that we were not upgraded to better cabins or given a refund when the passengers who came on board in Fremantle were paying $50 a day for Grills Suites. Also that the $250 we received at the end of the Dubai sector was per person, rather than $500 per cabin. The singles feel that they lost out as they had to pay significantly extra for their single cabins. I think they do have a point.

Anyway, there was apparently a lot of inaccurate information going around, and people talking over each other. The group will be putting together an email expressing their concerns.

I’m just taking things day to day – who knows what will happen next. With the coronavirus issues there are so many things that can still affect our cruise, let’s just enjoy each day as it comes.

Tonight was the Masquerade Ball. Inspired by tablemates on a prior cruise we had brought some famous people masks along with us, which we had planned to share with our table for the Masquerade Ball. We are currently sitting at the perfect table for this – they all have a great sense of humor and I know would love to be part of the fun.

Well as luck would have it, we are finally sitting at a hosted table tonight, and I doubt that our masks would go down well there. There may be another Masquerade Ball before New York, but half of our table is getting off in Sydney. Hopefully their replacements will also be a fun crowd who enjoys being a little bit silly.

This is a photo with us all wearing masks from that previous cruise:

Our hosted table turned out to be quite delightful. Our friends Peter and Christine were there too, and we met a lovely English couple who were in Queens Grill, and on their first world cruise, having only been on one previous short cruise. It was fascinating to hear their thoughts on the trip. They had not been in the Britannia restaurant before and were totally enchanted by the grandeur of the space. I must say the Grills dining rooms are lovely, but lack the elegance of the Britannia dining room.

The food was delicious (how do you choose between lobster, langoustines, or chateau briande?) and the company delightful.

Our perfect evening concluded with watching String Idols in the Royal Court Theater. They are 2 very talented young violinists who we have listened to many times, but they never fail to impress me. It has been a good day.