Blogs from Coral Sea, Pacific, Oceans and Seas - page 2

Well it’s been some time since I posted – mostly because I’ve been extremely busy on the Radiance. But I have managed to get off the ship a few times and both see the sights and spend some time with some friends. One of the most exciting things on the Radiance is that nearly every cruise is different – it is also the reason why I as the nav officer am so busy. Our first 2 cruises took us to New Caledonia, some place I had never heard of. It’s a group of French islands 600 miles due east of Australia. The 2 cruises were both chartered – one being a rock music charter, the other directed to some older clientele (ancient) and focusing on classical music. The group of islands has 1 port with an ... read more

Almerimar and back again Almerimar is a huge marina divided into about 4 bays containing some really nice buildings and developments that have been built but remain vacant. It is a real shame because the Marina has a really nice feel about it the beaches look manmade without character, are super windy and are lined with large hotels in various states of decay, new retirement villas are being built which are immaculate but the streets that surround them are uninspiring and empty. Unless you have a car there is little to do but it had a large supermarket which always gives us hours of entertainment trying to guess what is in the packaging when your dictionary only seems to contain the words you won’t ever need. Stumble in and Stumble out tours Booby man giving up ... read more

Hello as we cruise north along the eastern coast of Australia. We crossed the Tropic of Capricorn about 8:30 this morning. By the end of the day we were somewhere around 21 degrees south latitude. It was partly cloudy (means mostly sunny) for most of the day and the high temperature was about 84 degrees. There has been a slight breeze all day but not enough to make the seas rough or anything. We are really enjoying the great weather and hope it’s not too bad for all the folks back at home. We got an e-mail from Elizabeth last night that she will be changed from a Contract Employee to a Regular Employee at Chemir starting on March 31. We are very happy for her. J Just to correct something from yesterday. There are many ... read more

Thursday, March 6, 2014 Today is the first of three days at sea as head back to Sydney, Australia to end our cruise, L. Cindy and I were up fairly early this morning, you think being a sea day we would sleep in more, not today. We ate in the dining room this morning. The last few days we ate in the Windjammer buffet. Cindy and I ate the ham/cheese omelet. One thing I have done a lot of during the cruise is eat a lot bread. This morning I ate a croissant. Our table mates for breakfast were all from Austrulia. I believe I mentioned in a prior blog entry that a majority of the cruise is from Australia. One of our table mates was two older Australian ladies and they were here ... read more

Now I've changed to the Coral Sea although we're not there yet, but it's in the right direction, at least. Don't know why you can't publish a blog without having to choose a sea in the Pacific. We're just heading for the big middle! Anyway, got to Los Angeles at 8 a.m. yesterday but didn't get permission to disembark for another 2 hours. Glad we had cancelled our LA plans and just stayed close to the ship. We did get off and walked down to the USS Iowa, that is berthed nearby and that is now open for tours. We didn't go aboard because of our visit to the Arizona Memorial and the USS Missouri in Honolulu. Those are our beginning WWII and ending the war visits on this trip. Further to our sea wildlife sightings ... read more