Cruise - Day 15 - 17 Sep

What a difference a day makes! The seas had abated somewhat this morning and Gary dragged himself from his sickbed to capture the sunrise at 5.45am.

Good one Gaz (and thanks for waking me up!).

Our task at 9am was to line up to fulfil our Australian immigration re-entry requirements – better here than at Fremantle I guess. It was actually fairly well organised with passengers allocated a specific time to attend, and it only took about 25 minutes. If you have ever spent time with Gary in a slow moving line you would know that this time comes in just within his limit of patience, so thankfully there were no fireworks!

After we had been successfully screened, I headed up for the open decks to enjoy what could be the last of the sun bathing weather – I have been alarmed to see some of the weather forecasts of our upcoming destinations...Hobart with a max. of 12 degrees sends a chill up my spine...literally. It was still very windy but I managed to spend enough time up there to get slightly sunburned for the first time. Now at least I feel like I have done my duty in terms of the sun worshipping Aussie. I was slightly aghast, I must admit, to observe the rows of slowly baking older passengers who had passed the pleasantly golden look and moved onto the leather-like look of the seriously tanned. I think I'll stick to my “tan in a bottle”.

And now for my philosophical musing of the day...

I have mentioned before my naivety regarding the cruising fraternity of which, as you would expect, there are many present on this voyage. I suppose I had assumed that people cruised to get to places – ie the destination was the ultimate lure, but it appears this is not the case. The serious “cruisers” (and we have met many who have completed well over 10 cruises, one couple on board have almost 1000 sailing days notched up with 44 cruises to their name) just love the lifestyle on board and don't seem to care where they sail to – it's all about getting there. I have lost count of the number of people we have met who have done this exact cruise before, often more than once. Gary met a lady in her sixties who has sold her house and just hops from ship to ship, cruise to cruise, only going ashore for essential medical treatment etc.

While I am enjoying the cruise immensely, and can certainly see myself cruising again, I don't think Gaz & I will become hard core cruisers for a number of reasons. The first and most obvious reason is that Gary is obviously not a natural sailor and, whilst fine in calm and perhaps even moderate seas, is unfortunately unable to stay upright when anything slightly rough comes upon us. Secondly, we are both in essence introverts and could perhaps even be branded as anti-social at times. This is not a problem on the cruise as such – there are plenty of opportunities to be by yourself in both public and private areas, I just suspect that the hardcore cruisers would regard the chance to meet and converse with a wide variety of people as one of the major draw cards of the cruising life. Personally I am happy to meet people...if they are people I'm happy to meet (told you I'm anti-social!) Gary is even worse! I sometimes have to give him a surreptitious kick under the table to stop him telling some poor unsuspecting table-mate that they are absolute idiots. Actually, he has been very good and only sports some minor bruising on his shins...so far. Another problem with myself and the Gaz is that we are generally extraordinarily lazy and apathetic. We spend a lot of time in the cabin (significantly more than our fellow passengers, I fear), because we couldn't be bothered making a decision to participate in one of the many, many activities that are on offer daily. I have thought long and hard about this and believe what we need is to cruise with friends who would jolly us (or maybe bully us) into greater social participation. Don't get me wrong – we are having a really good time – but I do have a feeling that we would have more “fun” if we were travelling with friends or family.

Great finish to the day! We went and saw one of the fantastic Broadway style shows tonight which was a tribute to the “Piano Men” - Sedaka, Manilow, Elton John, Billy Joel, Liberace etc. It was excellent.

We then high-tailed it up to the open deck to watch the Tigers v Raiders game under the stars on the big screen. It was very cosy on the deck chairs with blankets and the Tigers did not disappoint. Bring on next week!