Blogs from Pacific, Oceans and Seas - page 11

20/08/14: At sea: During the night Dawn Princess steamed on a Westerly course across the Pacific Ocean towards Pago Pago Island. Becoming a deck officer: One begins life at sea as a cadet combining a university style qualification with terms in college and on the job experience doing working phases away at sea to understudy an officer at work. A cadet will gain experience in all aspects of ship life from deck maintenance, chipping, painting, cleaning, etc. to navigation work on the bridge. Once completing the cadetship and the academic qualification an oral exam is sat to gain an officer of the watch ticket. This ticket entitles one to serve as a second officer on any type of merchant vessel. Princess Cruises has a high standard for her officers and so always requires one licence over ... read more

At around 10:00 a.m. we arrived at Pitcairn Island. The local vendors came on board and we then set sail for a sail around the island. The Pitcairn Islands group is a British overseas territory. It comprises the islands of Pitcairn, Henderson, Ducie and Oeno. Pitcairn the only inhabited island is a small volcanic outcrop situated in the South Pacific. It is roughly 2170 Km’s south east of Tahiti and just over 6600 Km’s from Panama. The islands administrative headquarters are situated in Auckland 5310 Km’s away. The sight of the vendors approaching the ship was very unusual in their wooden longboats, as the island only has a population of 50 people I reckon 49 of them must have been on the boat. The prices of their souvenirs were not cheap however I just had to ... read more

At Sea: During the day we will continue our voyage on a South Westerly course across the South Pacific Ocean towards Easter Island. The Pacific Ocean separates Asia and Australia from the Americas. It may be further subdivided by the equator into northern and southern portions. It extends from the Antarctic region in the South to the Arctic in the North. The Pacific Ocean encompasses approximately one-third of the earth’s surface, having an area of 165.2 million square kilometres, significantly larger than the earth’s entire landmass of some 150 million square K’ms. Yesterday we facetimed Richard and Lyn Nottingham who gave us the very sad news that Wayne Spendlove had passed away, we were shocked and saddened to say the least particularly that it had happened over a week before, and we did not know until ... 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

This is the last full day at sea before we get to Sydney. That means it is the last day of enjoying all the pleasures of cruising. It does NOT mean the end of our story because we have about 10 more days scheduled on land before we return home, but it does mean we will slide down a little on the “pampered passenger” scale. That being said, this is as good a time as any to proclaim our appreciation and praise the service we received this cruise. However good this was, it actually is not unusual – we always get excellent service from Princess Cruises. We don’t want to make this into a commercial, but this is a terrific way to take a vacation and we recommend it to anyway who wants to see different ... read more