"Our Ship" The Dawn Princess, leaves Auckland for Sydney

We opted to see the ship leave Auckland rather than arrive - a good choice. The weather was a bit erratic (as usual) with sun and showers, but mainly sun – thank goodness. The first photograph was taken from Auckland’s North Shore, brunch time, just across the road from our usual cafe, in Birkenhead. Birkenhead is known as the “City of Views” this is looking back towards downtown Auckland and you can just see the tip of the stern of the ship in the centre of the photograph, tucked behind the hotel that looks like a ship! This street in Birkenhead goes down to the ferry.

If you want to find this on the map, it is Hinemoa St and the sandwich board bottom right is pointing to Palm Cafe – where I get my (LARGE) daily fix of coffee and usually a fairly full breakfast. Highly recommended if you are ever over this way.

Mid afternoon, Paula and I headed over to Devonport, to the top of Mount Victoria, ready to watch the Dawn Princess head off on the last leg of this year’s Round the World Cruise, bound for Sydney. We sat in the car (fortunately) as the temperature slipped down to about 14 degrees, staring at the ship which was scheduled to leave at 4pm – that is 1600hours nautically speaking. Gee I am getting the hang of this cruising jargon! We waited patiently and at 16:15, it moved. The clouds were gathering and the sun was somewhat hidden for most of the area but fortunately, the camera did a pretty good job of recording the departure.

The ship passes Devonport Wharf (just visible in the foreground) - and I was waving, flashing the car headlights and generally being a total embarrassment to Paula! Judging by a couple of flashes from the ship, someone was taking a picture or two from the ship, probably wondering who the loony was on land...

After Devonport, the ship turns 180 degrees to port (I think that is left...) and passes in front of Rangitoto Island. The 'toadstools' in the foreground are air vents for the network of tunnels in the mount, a defence post for Auckland when invaders were expected.  Rangitoto is an extinct volcano and can be seen from many different places around Auckland. 

A matter of minutes after this shot, the ship slowed - presumably to let the pilot off, did another turn - to starboard this time and headed off for Sydney.

I hopped back in the car as it was rather chilly and we headed back home.  Now it is time to see what is on the video camera...  The pictures above are all reduced in size from the original 3 or 4mb to about 355kb so if anyone wants any full sized images, just let me know.

A strange feeling watching the ship, knowing that about this time next year, we'll probably be there again waving to the 2011 cruisers probably with a degree of sadness as we won't be there right at the very end of the adventure with them, but also next year, we'll no doubt be catching up with a few passengers first...  We'll probably also be looking forward to 2012 by then.

Farewell Dawn Princess, see you again in about 265 days...

Under 300 days to go now.

The Dawn Princess continues its 2010 round the world journey and the on board bloggers continue to inform and entertain us.  Every day, both Paula and I dive into the various blogs for our ‘fix’.

What I had overlooked was that when we went to Sydney for a few days last year (round about Melbourne cup day) the Dawn Princess was in. Not for one minute did we think that a few months later we would have booked a cruise on it!  Had we realised, we would have taken more pics.

The fascinating thing about the various blogs is that each puts a different perspective on the cruise, which is brilliant.  “Packetau” is taken with Philip’s daily quotes and may well continue with that next year.

We have had several enjoyable international trips to the Australian Masters Games and the World Masters games, with the Kiwi contingent.  A lesson I picked up from the Jaycees, was recording the misdemeanours of the other members, usually to create a laugh and resulting in a small fine.  This seemed to make sense for the badminton players so I avidly recorded all such ‘incidents’ whilst we were away.  With  a bit of embroidery and massaging of the truth, our reunions were generally hilarious as these ‘incidents’ were given a wider airing.  Maybe my mission whilst on board will be to record the things that made us laugh.

We will certainly leave the historical info on each port to the others and as someone who prefers to be behind the camera or video camera, don’t expect a heap of personal pics! 

  We have enjoyed some of the stunning food creations that bloggers have posted so far and maybe we’ll make a point of taking lots of pics of the food!   Editing the movies and stills down into a reasonably sized package might take some time too as the critical thing is making sure you are brutal with the editing.  A 53 day cruise for us is quite a long one, so the resulting DVD may have to be broken down into segments otherwise the computer might struggle to cope.   If others are going to produce their own movies of the cruise, maybe we should make sure we swap addresses and post each other our finished DVDs!

FAMILY STUFF...

The new grandson arrived 6 days later than expected (July 26^th) and at this stage looks to be a chip off the old block(s), with a remarkable likeness to his dad at the same age.  Bearing in mind that Stewart also looked  a lot like me when he was young, we’ll just have to wait and see how junior progresses.  As Stewart’s wife is Brazilian, the normal convention there is to carry over mum’s maiden surname so Manu became a Santos-Green when she married Stewart.

It  took several days after the birth to confirm the baby’s name and we expected he might carry over the double barrelled surname.  But it was not to be.  The proud parents have opted for Noah Samuel Santos Green, thus retaining the ‘Santos’ as a Christian name.   Although there are Samuel’s in our Green family history, this is the first Noah and I can’t help thinking that rather than a Scalextric set, maybe granddad should buy him a carpentry set and show him a picture of the Dawn Princess...  

Second thoughts.  I’ll stick to the Scalextric set as at least I’ll enjoy it!