Today starts a three-day sailing dubbed the "Great Barrier Reef Experience". What does that mean exactly? It turns out to be much different than you would expect by that description. The plan was cruising only in the Ribbon Reef Region and the Great Barrier Reef, weather permitting and subject to marine conditions.
We woke up to very heavily overcast skies, but we did have a series of islands or mainland on our port side as we sailed north during the day. During his noon talk, the Captain mentioned that we were in a shipping channel, well-marked by tall buoys. The different shades of the surrounding seas were due to the depth of the water. If the sun had been out, we would have appreciated the variations even more. The most striking colors we saw today were from the passing commercial vessels that were headed south. There were many rain clouds on the horizon which did help cool the air off. It was still warm, but not as humid as it has been. The temperature was in the mid 80's with a following breeze. That is nice for sailing, but not so much for keeping the guests comfortable on the outside decks. We have 940 nautical miles to go to reach Darwin and the ship was doing a steady speed of 14 to 15 knots. Showers would come, but later in the day.
So the reef experience was no more than that - at least for today. The most exciting part of the late afternoon was passing through a powerful thunder and lightning storm that rocked the boat. It lasted for a while, dropping heavy rains the whole time. Actually, this sailing along the northeast coast is what we remember from past trips in this region. With one difference. The first time we did this run, there was a peculiar passenger that decided to get some attention while walking the promenade deck one morning. He claimed he saw a hammerhead shark alongside the ship when he stopped and looked down in the water. Sure got a lot of folks to look, but guess what? None of us saw anything. From then on, he was known as hammerhead shark man.
It was a good day to catch up on photos from yesterday and skip ahead to do research on future ports. It appeared that the big event of the evening was a "Glamp Out" in the Lido Pool area beginning at 5:30pm. It was billed as being a night of camp "fire" fun with live music, games, drink specials and s'mores. It tied into a Lido dinner where corndogs and sausages were served along with other camp-like food. On past cruises, we made a pass through the Lido just to see what that was all about. What we saw were a bunch of people who had arrived early to take every seat in the place. Not our idea of fun, we went to dinner as usual in the dining room. We cannot imagine how warm and sticky it must have been under the closed dome with a lot of people.
When we went to the dining room, we noticed that our section had a total if three guests, including us. Komang, our assistant waiter had been re-assigned to help in the Lido, but Kadek took care of us just fine. A tataki beef salad, a Caesar salad, and a bowl of smoked chicken and corn soup were the starters. The entrees were one chicken piccata dish and one Chef Neil's burger and fries. We switched the sides of fries and risotto, since one of us does not really like the pasta. It always seems to work out. Dessert was one serving of vanilla ice cream, which had to be a new batch. It was much creamier and frozen harder than usual.
We forgot to mention that before we entered the dining room last night, a waiter was there to give us a squirt of hand sanitizer….like it or not. And the health warning has appeared every sea day for weeks now. Something is going around because we are seeing more masked waiters. And to top it off, Kimberly, our cruise director, was not working today. She had mentioned that she was losing her voice a day ago, so we suspect it finally caught up with her. We sure hope she was able to make the trip to the reef yesterday, as we think this was her first time here. Her enthusiasm has been catching.
There was a movie in the World Stage this evening called The Sunlit Night. All of the lounges were having live music except the Ocean Bar. Each venue gets a day off in a week's time. Tomorrow we expect the continued reef sailing and cruising the Far North Region. Our waiter Kadek said he will be looking for whales and dolphins. Just kidding we think.
Bill & Mary Ann
