Sunday 15^th February

Oh, dear … we had a horrible emergency on our first-of-three-sea-days.  The Captain came over the tannoy at about 8pm and said that a passenger had taken that poorly that they needed to be cared for by a hospital rather than the medics onboard, and that unfortunately we’d have to put into port in Albany, Southwest Australia.

It took us about two hours to ‘turn left’ into Albany and as we sailed into the bay, we heard a throaty boat on our side of the ship.

We’re on Deck 5 and the main gangway is on Deck 3 and they disembarked the passenger/patient almost underneath our cabin (view obscured by a lifeboat).  We heard and saw what looked like a Pilot boat approach the ship, back up hard against the ship to keep a good connection whilst they transferred the patient.  We couldn’t see the transfer because of the lifeboat but we could hear lots of voices and banging gangways and things.  A couple of minutes later the boat turned round and roared away.

I expected the ship to proceed on its way, but we just sat there in the bay … about an hour later we heard the engine roar of the Pilot boat again, we assume that the medic had to “hand over” the patient to the ambulance crew if not the hospital itself, and this was the Pilot bringing him back to the ship.  As soon as he was aboard and we were watertight again, we set off back to our original course.

We’ve heard nothing more but would love to know if whoever it was made it OK.

In his usual teatime address the Captain dropped the bombshell that we were expecting some bad weather on our cruise to Adelaide and were expecting 30 knots winds and 3m swells … oh joy!

Monday 16^th February

Another lazy day on deck.  There was a games battle this afternoon … ship’s crew and entertainment staff versus some willing and game passengers.  It was old school egg and spoon race, pass the balloon from knee to knee and carry a glass of water on your head and tip it into a bucket type stuff and was actually quite fun … we had a staff team of ‘Faithful’, a staff team of ‘Traitors’ and the passengers called themselves the ‘Cruise-aders’ (crusaders) – with a lot of cheating and miscalculation of points, the Cruise-aders won 😊

Oh, dear the Captain has just done his teatime update and told us that the weather is worsening overnight with wind speeds up to 35 knots which will create 3.5m to 4m waves.

Tuesday 17^th February

Bugger all 😊

Wednesday 18^th February

Adelaide today … P&O are cheeky crafty buggers, 150 yards from the ship, across a road that has never seen a car, is a metro station where, when it’s a cruise day, you can buy an all day pass for 10 AUD which at the current exchange rate is £5. 

This is a photograph of the ship and I’m actually taking it from ON THE TRAIN.

However, I think preying on people’s nervousness to a certain extent, P&O have ‘laid on a shuttle bus’ at a cost of £7.50 EACH WAY into Adelaide.  As we got into Adelaide, we saw the shuttle bus about 150 yards away!

However, Adelaide is another fabulous Australian city.  Easy to get around, plenty of public transport and some unique works of art.

The pigs, known as “A Day Out” are fabulous bronze sculptures, and “The Spheres” in Rundle Mall are more colloquially known as “The Mall’s Balls.” Not that you can see them because this bloody website won’t upload them! Google them, they won’t have me in the photo but at least you can see the sculpture!

Something we love doing anywhere in the world is having a look round a good market and my word, does Australia do a good market!

I think this product name is perfect … don’t say it didn’t give you fair warning!

I happened across a craft shop with the most amazing array of fabrics, some beautiful aboriginal designs.  I could have gone mad but stopped myself and bought only a yard each of two lovely cotton fabrics.  I just didn’t have the time to go through the pattern books but all of the patterns were 5 AUD, that’s less than £3.  Unfortunately they wouldn’t ship them out of Australia because it would have been worth paying the postage!

We have another late sail this evening, 8.30pm, so we went back off the boat and to the local yachting marina bar … The Sailmaster … another thing the Aussies know how to do is seafood – prawn and chips please!