At Sea

10^th April 2012 

This morning we got up early for our walk, as we had to attend a face to face immigration clearance with Australian Officials who must have got on board in Rabaul, at 8.30am. The whole ship had completed clearance by noon, so I guess the 4 government officials spend the next 2 days at sea relaxing before we arrive in Brisbane on Friday.

After completing clearance we had breakfast and relaxed for the rest of the morning wandering around and watching a few islands go by. At 12 noon we were located in the Solomon Sea (part of the Pacific Ocean), 20nm off Woodlark Island on our port side, in 594m of water. The wind had picked up to 18 knots from SSE and is expected to build further overnight.

After lunch we went to a session in the Princess Theatre called “ Meet the Hotel Senior Managers” where a panel including the Hotel Manager, the Customer Services Manager, and the person who is in charge of procurement of all of the food and beverage, answered questions and provided insights into how everything works on the ship, in the Hotel operations (which is really everything to do with providing passengers services and keeping them happy). It was quite enlightening, and some of the statistics on food and beverage consumption were mind blowing (like 6,000 eggs per day are consumed).

It was interesting that only the fresh food ingredients loaded on board when we left were Australian sourced, all dry goods and long life products (eg milk) are sourced from the USA. The containers we saw being loaded in Guam, were ordered 3 myths ahead and all came from USA. It seems that just about everything is dictated from the USA, the movies on board, the food menus, merchandise in the shops etc. It now makes sense why they have run out of Vegemite !!!

We haven’t been to many shows so decided to go to one at 4.30pm, who was a vocalist, singing John Denver songs. I am not encouraged to bother to go to any other shows. It looks like they have done the rounds of the RSL clubs and looked for who was available. In contrast, the bands and vocalists they have in the bars have been excellent.

Late afternoon we took a drink down to the aft deck of our floor hoping to get a glimpse of the Louisiade Archipelago, which we were due to pass at around 6.30pm. Unfortunately we entered the Jomard Entrance to the Coral Sea ( a narrow pass between the Louisiades  and the rest of PNG) at 6.45pm, and it was pitch black, but we could see the lighthouse on the island that is in the middle of the passage. The Louisiades are a favourite cruising ground for many Australian yachties.

We expect the seas to get a bit rougher overnight, as we get further into the Coral Sea.