Day 54 - 11/25/22 - At Sea to Port Arthur, Australia

 Overnight the seas have been very calm.  Almost too calm.  This morning i missed the coffee chat as I got engaged with a lovely conversation over breakfast with 2 Aussie couples.  It was a good chat.  Afterwards, I watched the shore excursion presentation by Alex, the shore excursion manager.  For the leg of our journey, we are reserving port time in Hobart and Melbourne for visits with long time friends.  For Adelaide, we have a wine tasting tour and at Kangaroo Island, we'll find something at the port as it can be problematic to reach this port due to weather.


After the shore excursion talk, we spent the remainder of the morning up in the Crow's Nest looking at a very flat seat ahead of us.  I also did some research about Kangaroo Island and what we might do there.  Following a quick lunch with Rick and Abby, I hosted the Cruise Critic Meet & Greet in the Billboard Onboard area.  We were joined by Chris, our Cruise & Travel Director.  He answered a few questions.  It was the first time in a very, very long time that a ship's officer attended one of the these gatherings.  I also had a number of people thank me for this blog as they followed our journey before they embarked in Sydney two days ago.  I'm thankful it was helpful to a few.


Cantaré was the interview guests at the "Meet the Artist" event in BBKing.  They are an absolute delight to listen to and hear of their musical journeys.  Especially moving was Sergie's story of being separated from his family who are in Ukraine while he brings home the bacon on a cruise ship.  Afterwards I worked on a sermon for the Sunday interdenominational service.


We chose to eat in the Canaletto on this dressy night.  It wasn't very crowded, but as we finished, a couple from New Zealand was seated next to us.  We quickly learned that we were each motorcyclists and that we had ridden all over Europe on our own.  They are going next year to ride in Croatia.  We had a great discussion and hope to continue it in days following on this cruise.  


At the Captain's toast tonight, he introduced his senior officers which included a new Staff Captain, Mark Trembley, who will become Master of the Westerdam on December 6 when Captain Wouter goes on vacation.  He also has a new chief engineer from South Africa and a new future cruise consultant.  Tonight's entertainment was the Step One Dance Company who received a replacement male dancer and they performed Humanity which is probably my favorite of their sets.  It has a closing song which is very haunting for me when it asks the question:  Are we human or are we dancer?  It's such a powerful metaphor of life asking the question of whether we are perfect as a dancer, or struggle with the imperfection of being human.


We concluded our evening watching a beautiful sunset which set behind the distant Tasmanian mountains with the golden rays sparkling across the shimmering sea.  Scenes like this one is one of the reasons we love cruising.  What a way to end the day.



Earlier and as is his custom, Captain Wouter began to set expectations for the full Main Stage audience tonight when he said that our crossing from Hobart to Adelaide wouldn't be like today.  He's expecting rough weather. And with that I'll conclude with the hope of fair winds and following seas. Hope does spring eternal.


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