20170123: At Sea Port Chalmers to Wellington

Monday, January 23, 2017

Port Chalmers to Wellington Sea Day

We were hoping to get off to an early start for Wellington so as to make sure we arrived in time for our excursions, but the winds were still quite brisk in the morning. The ship had to use its side thrusters to ease tension on the dock lines, and the wind caused the ship to rock throughout the night, just as if it were on the water. The captain announced over the speakers that the ship's navigator and pilot, in conjunction with the local pilot, felt that it was too dangerous to attempt to leave Port Chalmers because side winds could blow us out of the very narrow shipping channel, leaving us stuck, and the channel blocked. So we had to wait until the winds died down.

We were allowed to go ashore to use the wifi and to walk around Port Chalmers if we wanted to, but had to be back on the ship by 11am. Jack and Sharon got off early and got their email downloaded after some initial struggles between the finicky wifi router, and their android phone. They then walked into Port Chalmers and up to an overlook above where the ship was docked. There wasn't much to the town, but it was quite a climb to get to the overlook.

Janet and I had a more leisurely breakfast and then walked to the Port Chalmers terminal for the wifi. The rain had stopped, and the clouds had dissipated, revealing beautiful rolling hillsides surrounding the harbor. The wind, however, was gusting at over 50mph, making it hard to make headway just to walk up the wharf to the terminal building. The wind was blowing so hard that the terminal staff had roped off an area along side the shipping containers that were stacked up to prevent anyone getting crushed if anything got blown over by the wind. After enduring the wind for the short excursion from the ship to the terminal, and after running into Jack and Sharon in the terminal, who reported their findings on the town, Janet and I were content just to upload pictures and text. The wifi was so finicky, you had to reconnect every few minutes, and the connection speeds varied from OK (2-5mbps), to bad (<1mbps to zero), so it took quite some time to get our pictures to upload to our iCloud photo sharing accounts.

We returned to the ship for lunch and then relaxation. Ben walked the promenade deck to log some miles, and watched the container ship operations going on off the port side of the ship and the log-yard operations off the starboard side. They have some amazing machines built for both of these industries. 

The container ship yard had these long legged trucks with the cabin 3 stories up in the air that can straddle shipping containers, lift them, drive them around the yard, and then stack them up to 3 high. There were several of these trucks zooming around in what looked like a prehistoric ballet. In the log yard, logging trucks were unloaded by a huge front loader. This dumped the logs into rough rows. Then something that looked like an excavator crossed with a dump truck with outriggers would race to the scene, and then tidy things up like the ultimate robot firewood stacker. They had the logs stacked in rows that were 25-30' high by 300-400' long. A tracked excavator like vehicle would be dispatched here or there if an odd log were sticking out where it didn't belong, and it would swing a hammer the size of a 52gallon drum to tap the offending logs into place.

We got together with Jack and Sharon for afternoon tea followed by afternoon trivia. We got knocked out of contention with a few dumb answers, but ended up within 3 points of the winners (20pt maximum score). It's especially frustrating when we write down the correct answer, but then convince ourselves to change it to something else, and then end up losing a point.

We finally were able to cast off and leave with a tugboat escort around 3pm. We had an excellent view from our balcony as we left the harbor, and could see where our tour had taken us yesterday but with an entirely different perspective with no rain and only partly cloudy skies. Our tour would have been an entirely different experience without the torrential soaking rains that eliminated any scenic viewing opportunities.

As we cruised past the Royal Albatross Center, we could see the albatross nesting areas with huge white birds sitting on their nests on a gently sloped grassy hillside.  Around the corner, there was a much steeper and rockier area where brown backed gulls had built nests athat looked liked terraced condominiumiums.  

We finally got to see many of the Royal Albatrosses flying, and as we headed out into open water, we continued to be able to spot Royal Albatrosses riding the air currents around wave tops with very little effort or wing beating.

The production show was a song and dance tribute to Mo-Town called Motor City. We had seen a big production by the same name during our Panama Canal Cruise, and were surprised that they were going to put it on the smaller stage. Well, it turned out that it was a different scaled down show with some of the same musical numbers, but smaller and fewer stage effects. The earlier version we saw had a pink Cadillac on the stage for a couple of songs. This was absent from the current show, but the show was very well done and entertaining. We sat in the front row, and during one of the songs "My Girl", the male lead came down and tried to get an elderly woman to come up with him on stage, and when she refused, he tried to get Sharon to go up with him. In retrospect, when we had seen the earlier larger production, they did select Janet, who did a turn on the stage and then rocked in his arms briefly during the song to solicit jealous glares from the two female lead singers at the edges of the stage. Sharon refused as well, and as the song had progressed to the point of no return, he returned empty handed to the stage and sat, looking heartbroken for that part of the song.

After the stage production, Janet and Ben retired for desserts and bed, while Jack and Sharon danced the night away.

The cruise director had made an announcement prior to the stage production that because an earthquake had badly damaged the road to the cruise terminal in Wellington, that no pedestrian traffic would be allowed at the terminal. This meant that anyone not booked directly with a Princess excursion would have to take a ticket for a bus shuttle from the pier to the center of Wellington. This might have messed up any people with privately booked excursions because no-one would be allowed to be picked up at the pier as well, so tour operators would have to figure out where the ship's shuttles were going to deposit passengers, and when you got off the ship was unpredictable because a limited number of shuttle buses could take hours to disembark nearly 3000 passengers. Fortunately for us, we booked our Wellington excursion directly with Princess, and would be given priority boarding on the first shuttles and boarded directly onto our excursion operators bus. I guess we have managed to find some good luck during this seemingly bad luck plagued cruise, at least as far as picking the right excursions to have booked directly through Princess.