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Published: March 19th 2014
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Hello from somewhere in the Tasman Sea. Actually the navigational report at noon had us at 36 degrees south latitude (forgot the longitude), with a 12 knot breeze, 74 degrees, and sunny with mostly clear skies. It is back to being very pleasant weather again.
Tonight will be another “first experience” for us. Almost everyone else will be leaving the ship tomorrow so they have to pack their bags and prepare to leave tonight. Although this cruise is almost over, we will be staying aboard (even in the same cabin) for the next cruise beginning tomorrow afternoon. So if you were worrying that the story was coming to an end, then don’t fret mate as our adventure will be continuing. But that is getting the story out of sequence again.
We began by sleeping in this morning and not going to breakfast until about 8:30. Janet passed up an opportunity for Eggs Benedict and tried a special Frittata. David stuck with his usual ham & cheese omelet. At the table were two couples from Australia who are just finishing their cruise, but also another American couple who staying for the following cruise. We have actually
heard of several couples doing that same thing, so maybe our plan wasn’t as “original thinking” as we had thought.
After breakfast, Janet went to the final gathering of her Knitters and Natters group and said her farewells to these needle workers. David went to a presentation on “bridge controls”. It was a slide show instead of a tour, but interesting none the less. There were a lot of facts and figures, only a few are repeated here. The ship has 4 electric motor generators (each capable of producing 15,000 horsepower). They turn two propellers (6 blades with a total diameter of 5 meters) and can drive the ship at a max speed of over 22 knots. It takes a 3 kilometer arc to turn the ship 90 degrees at full speed, so they have to plan their course changes carefully (slower speeds obviously take less distance). The ship consumes 2 tons of fuel per generator at full power, which is up to 192 tons of fuel per day. When they fully fill all the fuel bunkers in port before a cruise it costs approximately $2M. The ship usually consumes 750 tons of fresh water per day,
and they can produce up to 40 tons per hour. He joked that the passengers consume even more fuel than the ship. The Sun Princess has plenty of water under the keel in Sydney Harbor, but the ship only slips under the Harbor Bridge by 5 meters (some of the bigger ships cannot come into the harbor and have to tender their passenger to/from shore from out in the bay). There were displays of the steering and navigation systems, backup and failover systems, and lots of info which was interesting but will not be reported here. One fact he explained was that the reason we skipped Port Chalmers was because there are two sharp turns required to enter the port, and the strong winds could have blown the ship out of the channel at their necessarily slow speed.
Afterwards, David changed into shorts and t-shirt and walked 4 ½ laps around the Promenade Deck (3 laps is a mile). There were a lot of folks out walking today.
Meanwhile Janet went to the discussion session of the ship’s book club. She had found the book to be very interesting and was looking forward to
discussing it with the other readers. The consensus of her group seemed to like the book, but those who had gotten all the way to the end concluded that it was done strangely. The name of the book was “Daughters of Mars”. It is the story of two Australian farm girls who become military nurses in World War I. It had a lot of interesting history of the part that Australia played in that war. Anyone who likes historical fiction would enjoy it. Of course the Australians who were in the group recognized some of the places and knew the history better than Janet did.
We met back in the cabin about 1:00 and went to the Pizzeria for lunch. They are big for personal pizzas but a little small for sharing. Anyway, we got two that were tasty and had a good lunch. Then we went to pick out some of the photos they had been taking of us all through the cruise. We chose a couple of them but left most of them. We have quite a few of our own photos to sort through once we get back home.
This afternoon
David went up to the pool to swim for a while. There were a bunch of people up there sunbathing but not many in the pool. As the Aussie summer is coming to an end, many of them seemed to be intent on refreshing their tan. When he got back to the cabin, Janet went to High Tea in the Regency Dining Room. She sat with a couple who somehow knew David from earlier in the cruise (getting to be a small ship).
We received a nice e-mail from Elizabeth and the cats are getting along just fine without us. Everything is locked up nice and tight and running smoothly at home. Thanks – we have been hoping that “no news is good news”.
Before dinner we had a little wine and then went to our final dinner on this cruise. Unfortunately Dallas was sick and did not attend, but we had a final meal with Val. She gave us their mailing address and asked that we send them a few of our photos once we get back home. For dinner, Janet had a mushroom pastry puff for appetizer and a Caesar Salad. David had a small portion of fettuccini alfredo and a bowl of pepper-pot-soup. We both had a New York strip steak, each of which was large enough to feed both of us. For dessert we each had a slice of mud pie with a scoop of ice cream. Once again it was a marvelous meal!
This evening we get our 2
nd hour back as we will be in Australia tomorrow. But since we had plenty of time tonight, we went to the Princess Theater for another show by Donna Campbell (the lady who had impersonated Dolly Parton a few nights ago). Then we stayed for the late movie in the theater and watched The Book Thief. Donna was pretty good but the movie was very dark and depressing – not at all what we thought it was supposed to be.
David has inserted photos of a few views of our cabin and other places around the ship. We are located right next to the elevator in the aft section of the ship. That makes it a little noisy sometimes, but also convenient when we want to come and go. If we haven’t explained it before, our room does not have a balcony but instead is classified as a Deluxe Oceanview Cabin. What that seems to mean is that the size of the room is increased by the amount that would have been the balcony, but we can only look outside and not actually go outside from the cabin. But it is nice.
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