22nd June

At Sea Fine Slight Sea

From the Navigator.

Since departure from Sydney, Sun Princess remained on a north-easterly heading throughout the night and into the morning. In the afternoon Sun Princess will round Cape Byron the most eastern point of the Australian mainland where we will then alter course and set a northerly heading. In the evening we will exit the Tasman Sea and enter into the Coral sea.

We both had a good night’s sleep and were ready to get into the ship board routine.

This morning there was the first meeting of the Pacific Circler’s 2016 a group formed from the roll call on Cruise Critic. The group is about 195 so we had to meet in the Marquis Dining room. The Captain and a number of the staff attended to welcome us aboard. We will be doing other events with this group.

 Later on I stood in a long queue at the internet café to get some advice as to why I could receive emails but not send them. When I was on this ship before I remember we had to change the outgoing address to the one the ship uses. This time they told me we do not need to do this, however I still cannot send emails using Microsoft Outlook so I am going to use Gmail.

At 1pm I went to look to see what the Ballroom classes were like not really expecting much as we know the instructor is John Graham who was on the World Cruise in 2014 and we did not like his method. This time it’s the same, he has you changing partners all the time. It is advertised that you don’t need a partner and so lots of ladies turn up without partners. We will not be going again. I also went to check out the line dancing it did not look too bad so we will try it out tomorrow.

Just after lunch we had some excitement we could have done without, a sick passenger had to be taken by helicopter to hospital. The helicopter could not land so they had to winch him up to it. The Captain assures us that he would be OK. We assume he went to Coffs harbour or maybe Port Macquarie.

After our afternoon coffee we went back to the cabin and a note was there to say that our table had been changed so that we can all sit together all 10 of us. However, when we were taken to table 123 in the Regency dining room it already had 2 people sitting at it and it was only a table for 8. After some conversation with the head waiter we were seated at another table which they set up for 10. Tomorrow night we will be on 123 which will become a table for 10. Not sure what they are doing with the 2 that were there.

After dinner all of us except Bev & Ian went to the show in the Princess Theatre billed as Variety Showtime with Instrumentalist Patrick Roberts a violinist whom some of you may have seen on Carols by Candlelight. I took a while to warm to him but he was really good, playing a variety of music styles backed by the Princess band.

Afterwards we went for our usual hot chocolates with the group, then into bed. For those interested they had the State of Origin Rugby game on the big screen outside or in the Legend’s Bar. None of our group went.