We are now on our way back to Sydney and into the last week of our cruise and all of a sudden time seems to have gone really quickly, we now have just 4 nights left onboard which is really quite scary.
After being onboard for all of those nights I still find myself waking up at around 5:30, even though I have been in different time zones for over a month my body clock is still behaving like I am back in the UK. Nicole on the other hand finds it difficult to wake up in the morning so I tend to do a bit of reading on my tablet until she comes to.
Today was a sea day with a bit of a difference, the daily described it as a technical stop. What happened was at 11:00 we arrived at a small island off the coast of Australia called Willis Island. The reef pilot who was still onboard then came over the ships public address to explain the procedure and reason for it.
As this cruise is all Australian home ports it isn’t technically an international cruise and therefore not allowed to sell any duty free items. To get round this the ship has to drop anchor very briefly off the coast of Willis Island so that it can be recorded in the ships logs and thus qualifying it as a international stop.
The whole process took around 45 minutes and during this time we were given a talk over the PA by one of the three meteorologists that live on the island for 6 months at a time. The weather station on the island is used to monitor and record weather conditions which hopefully will provide early warning against cyclones in the region.
As you can see from the photos it’s an amazing setting and very picturesque. As nice as it looks I don’t think I could spend 6 months there with just two others for company.
So at about 11:15 the ship dropped anchor and performed a 360° turn before giving 3 long blasts of the horn before continuing on our way. The upper decks were very busy with many coming up to witness this unusual event. Nobody got off the ship so no immigration to deal with so it is as described, just a technical stop.
The rest of the afternoon we spent cruising at sea heading towards our next stop which is Brisbane. The weather today has been glorious and we have spent the best part of it up on the Solstice Deck just relaxing in the sun.
Considering we have spent just short of four hours tendering back and forth over the last four days the chance to just sit back and take it easy was most welcome.