February 13, 2017

    This is a Sea Day (#3).  The sky is sunny and the temperature about 27 and it is windy, about 35 km per hour.  The waves were over one meter with some white caps. We climbed up to Deck 11 starting after 7 a.m., as the ship approached the Whitsunday Passage at the southern edge of the Great Barrier Reef, known as the Great Barrier Marine Park.  We will leave the park area in two days time. This begins the Coral Sea now and the sea between the reef and mainland is sometimes referred to as the Inside Passage, a term also used to describe the waterway along the Canadian and Alaska cruising route.  Once we entered the islands, the waves became smaller due to the sheltering of the land. The island chain is known as the Cumberland Islands named after the king’s brother, the Duke of Cumberland, by James Cook in the 1770s.  After experiencing the strong wind on the open deck, which is 653 steps for one circuit, we went down to Deck 5 where there was more protection from the wind and fewer people walking the circuit.  On Deck 11 the gusts of wind were so strong that you seemed not to be able to walk forward at times. We walked 6,253 steps before stopping for breakfast.

   We joined for breakfast Jim and Diane, whom we met on the shuttle bus to the ferry that transferred passengers to the ship in Sydney.  Then we found a place in the lounge chairs on Deck 5 to read in the warm shade during the morning.

   The reef pilot, Ian Perry, who boarded in Brisbane and will stay with the ship until Darwin, will be giving commentary at times over the next few days, when not navigating on the bridge. One fact he announced is that the passage and islands were named by James Cook, who thought that the day that he found them, about 235 years ago, was Whit Sunday (Whit Sunday is the seventh Sunday after Easter in Britain).  However, it was really Monday, since he was sailing west and had crossed the International Dateline and not realized it.  Ian will be describing landmarks using the clock face, rather than referring to the port (left) side or the bow (front) or the starboard (right) side.  He will tell us that at 10 o’clock, always facing the front, there is something to look at. The passage is about two kilometers wide.

   We ate lunch in the dining room with three Australians that we had already met and a Canadian couple who live just a 15 minute walk from us.  We went to the Aurora Theater to listen to the Special Interest Talk on Tropical Weather.  Cyclones and Typhoons are what North Americans call hurricanes.  Then, we found loungers in the shade on the other side of the ship’s Deck 5 to read for the rest of the afternoon.

    We joined Bob and Maureen for dinner in the dining room, our regular reservation.  We chose appetizers of Beef Broth or breaded shrimp, followed by the main course choices of Chicken Satay Endive and Watercress salad or Oven Baked Veal Shank. We both chose the Mochaccino Cheesecake and tea for dessert. The variety show was just performed at 7:15 tonight since a game show “Love and Marriage” was planned for later in the evening.

  Tomorrow we anchor at Yorky’s Knob near Cairns for the day and then two more days at sea before docking in Darwin for 13 hours.

Steps  11,919 = 12.41 miles