Day 52: 20231114 Tuesday, November 14, 2023 At Sea
The ship is continuing its circumnavigation of Australia having turned left around the SW corner of Australia and is now headed due East. The seas and winds are a little less strong, but the weather has definitely taken a turn for the cooler. The temperatures are now in the upper 50’s to lower 60’s, and a light coat is necessary to walk around the pool deck. The promenade has been closed for safety because of the wind and waves.
Our morning trivia got us up out of bed, but we didn’t win any prizes because we got beat by 2 points. The prize was a bag of mixed items that we have previously won including the string bag, coasters, cozies and luggage tags. There were also the Winner medals and a notebook, but there were just a couple of each item in the bag so the winning team had to figure out how to divvy up that loot.
There was an enrichment lecture that followed where the captain, Diego Perra, was interviewed by the cruise director. The captain is from Sardina in Italy. He says his favorite destination in the world is home, of course. But his home town is not big enough to have a cruise ship port within driving distance. He did say that he has 3 shifts of staff on the bridge including staff captains and pilots who report to him, and they do the driving, so please don’t ask him who’s driving the ship when they see him in the hallways. Someone in the audience asked about the Grand Princess, which is currently undergoing deep cleaning in Adelaide due to a dual outbreak of Covid and Norovirus. Tough luck there. We certainly had a bad non-covid respiratory virus that made the rounds when we rode the Grand Princess from Vancouver to Sydney, but luckily didn’t have a norovirus outbreak. That would have been miserable.
The Coral Princess currently has 30-40 passengers in quarantine, but by current standards, optional masking is recommended, along with hand washing and social distancing. About 10-20% of the passengers are now wearing masks in public areas. The Kiwi’s that we had played trivia with earlier in the cruise have had Covid going through their ranks. Two have just come out of quarantine, while others are in various stages of illness. We are hoping our vaccination will keep us from getting covid. Janet hasn’t had it, but Ben had it when Omicron made its rounds.
The Grapevine wine tasting had a second session today for Elite members. We miss the first one earlier in the cruise. This tasting featured all Australian wines, which overall seemed better than the New Zealand wines we had tried previously on our excursions. Australia is such a large country that there are plenty of places with microclimates suitable for good wine production. They always start with a sparkling wine, which they can label a Prosecco. This was fermented in a steel vat, and then undergoes a second fermentation after the addition of sugar to provide the carbonation. The Chardonnay and Pinot Noir were drinkable but nothing remarkable, while the dessert wine tasted like apricot and honey syrup because it was so sweet.
Progressive Trivia session #11 went off today. We got beat by one point for prizes, but our lead is still safe as the team that beat us is more than 10 points behind us in the rankings. The other teams are still nipping at our heels, so we still need to stay sharp.
We hit the buffet for dinner because the Coral Princess production team put on a show in the Universe Lounge called On The Bayou. The Universe Lounge has a much smaller seating capacity. We dropped in on comedian Gavin Baskerville’s stand up routine at 6:30pm, sitting at the back of the theater, and left at 6:50pm to get seats in the Universe Lounge. We had anticipated they would open the lounge at 7pm for the 7:30pm show, but the lounge was open and nearly full when we arrived. We were lucky to get two seats towards the back. Our view of the stage was partially blocked by a pillar holding up the balcony so we had to rock side to side to see the show, but Ben could easily get up and walk around the back without blocking anyone to take a few photos. The Universe lounge has 3 rotating stages so sets can spin around and the main center stage had the cast walking and dancing in circles. The show had a lot of New Orleans themed music including Zydeco, the House of the Rising Sun, and Blue Bayou. The costuming and dancing were good, but with this particular cast, the vocals are a bit weak. But the show was entertaining and worth seeing, even from the back of the lounge.
Our clocks move ahead another hour tonight so we’ll be off to bed early again.
