- The Journey Begins – The 2018 Grand World Voyage
- Leaving San Diego for Fort Lauderdale
- Arriving in Fort Lauderdale and our first day
- Fort Lauderdale – Day 2
- Day 1 – The Adventure Begins
- Day 2 – Our First Sea Day – Abba Fabulous!
- Day 3, Georgetown, Grand Cayman
- Day 4, At Sea En Route Puerto Limon (San Jose), Costa Rica
- Day 5, Puerto Limon, Costa Rica
- Day 6, Transit the Panama Canal
- Day 7, Fuerte Amador, Panama
- Day 8, At Sea
- Day 9, At Sea
- Day 10, At Sea
- Day 11, At Sea
- Day 12, At Sea
- Day 13, At Sea – Enroute to Nuku Hiva
- Day 14, At Sea, Enroute to Nuku Hiva
- Day 15, At Sea – Enroute to Nuku Hiva
- Day 16, Taiohae, Nuku Hiva, French Polynesia
- Day 17, At Sea
- Day 18, Avatoru, Rangiroa, French Polynesia
- Day 19, Papeete, Tahiti, French Polynesia
- Day 20, Mooera, French Polynesia
- Day 21, Bora Bora, French Polynesia
- Day 22 – At Sea
- Day 23, Avarua, Rarotonga, Cook Islands
- Day 24, At Sea
- Day 25 – Alofi, Niue
- Day 26 – At Sea – Crossed Dateline – Jan 29th GONE!
- Day 27 – At Sea
- Day 28 – At Sea
- Day 29 – Auckland, NZ
- Day 30 – Tauranga – 3 Feb 2018
- Day 31 – Napier
- Day 32, At Sea – Super Bowl Monday
- Day 33, Port Chalmers, Dunedin
- Day 34, Fjordlands National Park – Milford Sound
- Day 35 – At Sea – Enroute Sydney
- Day 36 – At Sea
- Day 37 – Sydney, Australia
- Day 38 – Sydney, Australia
- Day 39 – At Sea
- 2020 World Cruise Possibilities
- Day 40, Hobart, Tasmania
- Day 41, At Sea
- Day 42, At Sea
- Day 43 – Penneshaw, Kangaroo Island
- Day 44 – Adelaide, South Australia
- Day 45 – At Sea
- Day 46 – At Sea
- Day 47 – Albany, Western Australia
- Day 48 – 21 Feb Perth
- Day 49 – Perth Yarn Crawl
- Day 50 – At Sea
- Day 51 – At Sea
- Day 52 – At Sea
- Day 53 – Benoa, Bali
- Day 54 – Benoa – Bali
- Day 55 – At Sea
- Day 56 – At Sea
- Day 57 – At Sea
- Day 58, Puerto Princesa
- Day 59, – At Sea
- Day 60, Manila, Philippines
- Day 61, Manila, Philippines
- Day 62 – At Sea
- Day 63 – Hong Kong
- Day 64, Hong Kong
- Day 65 – At Sea
- Day 66 – At Sea
- Day 67 – Phu My, Vietnam
- Day 68 – Siem Reap (ms Amsterdam at Sea)
- Day 69 – Siem Reap
- 2020 World Cruise – w/detailed dates
- Day 70 – Singapore
- Day 71 – At Sea
- Day 72 – Phuket
- Day 73 – At Sea
- Day 74 – At Sea – Enroute to Sri Lanka
- Day 75 – Columbo, Sri Lanka
- Day 76 – At Sea – Enroute to the Seychelles
- Day 77 – At Sea
- Day 78 – At Sea
- Day 79 – Victoria, Seychelles
- Day 80 – At Sea
- Day 81 – At Sea
- Day 82 – St Denis – Reunion Island
- Day 83 – At Sea
- Day 84 – At Sea
- Day 85 – At Sea
- Day 86 – Maputo – Safari Day 1
- Day 87 – Kambaku River Sands – Safari Day 2
- Day 88 – Kambaku River Sands – Safari Day 3
- Day 89 – Kambaku River Sands – Safari Day 4
- Day 90 – Cape Town, South Africa
- Day 91, Cape Town, South Africa
- Day 92 – At Sea
- Day 93, Walvis Bay, Namibia
- Day 94 – At Sea
- Day 95 – At Sea
- Day 96 -Luanda, Angola
- Day 97 – At Sea
- Day 98 – At Sea
- Day 99 – Crossing the Equator
- Day 100 – At Sea
- Day 101 – At Sea
- Day 102 – Banjul, Gambia
- Day 103 – Dakar, Senegal
- Day 104 – At Sea
- Day 105, Praia – Cape Verde
- Day 106 – At Sea
- Day 107 – At Sea
- Day 108 – At Sea
- Day 109 – At Sea – April 23, 2018
- Day 110 – At Sea
- Day 111 – San Juan, Puerto Rico
- Day 112 – At Sea
- Day 113 – At Sea
- Day 114 – Fort Lauderdale
- 2018 World Cruise Entertainers
Day 98 – At Sea – April 12th
4 AM wake up call
For the second time this cruise, we had an actual first stage alarm. You may recall that the first one was during our late seating dinner back on 10 March. That turned out to be caused by some residual smoke/fire from the incinerator. This time the alarm sounded around 4 AM waking me immediately. Judy didn’t wake up and I decided to let her sleep unless things took a turn for the worse. About 15 minutes later, the Captain came over the public-address system and informed us that the problem was with the incinerator again and the situation was under control and the alarm cancelled.
Crossing the Equator
For the fourth time this cruise we will cross the equator. We will be crossing around 11:30 PM this evening. The Shellback ceremony will take place tomorrow around 10 AM. Preparations for the ceremony have begun in the Lido pool area. They’ve started hanging pirate flags and other similar Crossing the Equator decorations.
This Crossing will be extra special since it will occur at the intersection of the equator and the Prime Meridian – which will make us all “Emerald Shellbacks.” The Captain mentioned during one of his noon navigational updates that he received numerous requests that the ship deviate from its original course so that we would cross at the prime meridian. Apparently, it wasn’t too far off course as he agreed and we will be crossing there tonight.
There are 3 types of “Shellbacks”:
• Ordinary Shellback – cross equator anywhere
• Golden Shellback – cross at the international date line
• Emerald Shellback – cross at the prime meridian
I first crossed the equator in 1985 on board the aircraft carrier, USS Saratoga, when I was in the US Navy. I became a Golden Shellback while I was on board the aircraft carrier, USS Ranger, in 1993.
The Crow’s Nest will host a Prime Meridian and Equator Crossing party tonight at 11 PM.
Internet Outage
For most of the cruise the Internet has been remarkably good. Much better than I experienced on the 2016 World Cruise. During the 2016, cruise uploading pictures was a chore and I typically had to do them one at a time. This cruise I’m able to upload them in a single batch and am successful most of the time with only a few needing to be reloaded.
Around midday I noticed the Internet was not working. Soon we received a notice that the Internet was unavailable. This has happened from time to time during the cruise but after about an hour it seemed that something more serious was going on. This was confirmed in the afternoon when we received a letter from the IT officer, a copy of it is HERE, that said the power supply failed that powers a critical internet system component. The letter went on to say that Internet conductivity may not be restored until Senegal or Gambia 4-5 Days from now.
Fortunately, I didn’t have any extraordinarily pressing business that required access to the Internet and we are still receiving satellite TV. A little to my surprise, we still received the daily New York Times in hard copy. Since we were still getting Cellular at Sea I suspect that they are using the cellular service to download the copies of the papers at the print shop and deliver to the cabins.
Early this afternoon the Captain announced that one of our diesel engines had a problem requiring us to slow to 10 knots instead of our normal speed of 16 knots. We never heard any more about this engine problem so I suspect it was resolved later on in the day.
Liver Soup!
A few days ago, I commented that no one at our table ordered the liver when it was available a few days ago. Tonight, we had the option of ordering “Liver Dumpling Soup” which I had never heard of before, and everyone at our table took a pass.
Omar
The entertainer in Queen’s Lounge this evening was a performer that went by a single name, Omar. He was billed as being able to play up to 20 different musical instruments. He displayed his talent on about 10 during our show. These included the violin, bagpipes, pan flute, recorder and guitar. Here is a short video of some of the highlights.
Prime Meridian Party
After the evening show in the Queen’s Lounge, I headed up to the Crow’s Nest for the Prime Meridian party. This was also billed as a pajama party and many people wore their robes, a few people wore pajamas, but about half the crowd was in street clothes. The Crow’s Nest was comfortably full, with many people standing around staring at the large TV screen watching our position as we got closer and closer to what will ultimately be all zeros on the latitude and all zeros on the longitude.
The Station Band played terrific music and the dance floor was full of people enjoying the music. As the ship neared the Prime Meridian/Equator the crowd gathered around the large TV screen and watched the final seconds before the screen indicated we had crossed. As it turned out we probably missed the precise crossing point by 30 or 40 feet and with the precision of today’s GPS systems it was shown on the screen that we never did hit 000 latitude and 000 longitude at the same time. We would hear later that the only way to do this exactly would be to stop the ship and maneuver to the precise point, so we were happy with coming extraordinarily close and declaring ourselves Emerald Shellbacks.
Here is a video of the Prime Meridian and Party.
This entry was posted in 2018 Grand World Voyage, Sea Day
