dougnewmanatsea

About governmental oversight of Antarctica - we know there is a rule about limiting the number of people landing at one time on that continent. I don't know if a bunch of countries' representatives sat around a table and had a show of hands to set that number, but Antarctica is not an anarchical continent. Somehow, some way, there is more than just "paper" oversight.

For countries that are parties to the Antarctic Treaty, the treaty is part of their national laws, and they have the power to enforce those laws. But these laws only apply to citizens of those countries, or within the borders of those countries.

It is all very complicated, because there is no central authority regulating what goes on in Antarctica. What rules exist are basically there by mutual agreement and without anyone enforcing them.

I am thoroughly puzzled by the last statement. There is no government of Antarctica. What "government" has the right to approve cruise ships travelling there? I am still shaking my head.

There is something called the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat but that is largely a "paper" organization.

Eight months out of the year is a bit much, but I could probably handle it. Now, could I do it for 20-odd years as he has? I might get bored after a while.

I've spent at most a month at sea in one year.

Douglas Ward has a number of people that work for him.

I think someone sails on every ship that gets a rating. He can't sail on all of them personally, but he does sail on quite a few.

The number of errors seems to have gone down recently. For a while around 2000 or so it was really appalling. Mr. Ward had some health problems and I think the book suffered from less of his direct input.

sorry doug you cannot make the MAXIN GORKY trip iam going however. if the rumour os correct i will try a cruise on her on orienbt lines i just love the look of the ship. off on SAGA RUBY tomorrow.just did the lunch on EURODAM in soton love her also

If MAXIM does turn to be Orient Lines' first ship I think it would be spectacular. She is actually a superior ship to MARCO POLO in a lot of ways - among other things, the dining rooms can seat everyone at once, she has a real theatre, an indoor pool, an observation lounge, larger cabins, etc.

I am still somewhat skeptical that it will work out with her, but I would be delighted if it did!

I don't know if you've been on RUBY before but if you haven't, she is a lovely ship... I am sure you will really enjoy her.

As for EURODAM, I am not terribly fond of her Vista-class forebears but she looks very nice. Probably the nicest HAL ship built since AMSTERDAM.

I would think the "new" Orient Lines would begin operations sometime in 2009, but I don't know when. I guess spring at the earliest.

I don't know just how much work is planned for MAXIM GORKIY (assuming, of course, that Orient Lines succeeds in acquiring her). She could enter service for Orient Lines with almost no work at all (as MARCO POLO has for Transocean), but I doubt it.

I was rather surprised to hear this, as she has steam turbines and I also believe she will require a significant amount of work to bring her into compliance with SOLAS standards in the near future.

However, I am very happy about it - she does look like a delightful ship. A group of friends are sailing in her in September and I would have liked to have gone but the timing didn't work. I was afraid she would be sold for scrap after her retirement from Phoenix Reisen in November so I'm glad she appears to be getting a new lease on life. If the on-board product is as good as the "old" Orient Lines I may have found my new favorite ship!

I can now reveal that the "new" Orient Lines first ship is rumored to be MAXIM GORKIY.

I must admit the announcement took me by surprise (I heard about it this morning and was surprised, and then was surprised again when it was announced since I didn't know it was going to be announced today). I didn't even know who Wayne Heller was until today, so I can't speculate on his reasons for the timing of this deal.

I know in the case of Swan Hellenic, Lord Sterling, the former chairman of P&O, was going to buy it whole (including MINERVA II, ex R EIGHT, now ROYAL PRINCESS) from Carnival but it did not work out. Eventually he acquired the name only for very little money and then teamed up with All Leisure Holidays to re-launch it.

It may be that Star was not willing to sell at a price Mr. Heller liked a year ago - or perhaps he was not interested.

He certainly did not already have a ship, though presumably he intends to bought one very soon. A name has been suggested to me as a ship he wants to buy (or has bought?) but I am not going to say anything publicly yet.

I loved Orient Lines and do wish it had been sold as a going concern, but I will be interested to see how this develops.

ships cat - You should try QM2 at least once. She is huge, but I quite like her.

Next time on her I would like to do a crossing though - if there are ports involved, I prefer something smaller. Much smaller. Tendering on a ship QM2's size is not fun.

Ruby - Congratulations on your Antarctica cruise!

I think NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORER would have been my choice, purely because of the personal experience with Lindblad that several friends of mine have had. I am sure CORINTHIAN II will be delightful, though.

engineer38 - It is ASTORIA. Apparently she is going to be renamed QUEST FOR ADVENTURE, which I think is a rather silly-sounding name for a ship.

On another note, I think many on this thread will be interested to see this if you haven't yet!

I'm now officially confused - why would the QE2 allow open flames for flambé on a ship when I've been told over and over that open flames nowadays are a no-no? If they can flambé a crêpe, why can't they char a steak?

For that matter, HAL offers flambés as well. Or at least did very recently. Last time I sailed with HAL (2005), there was one every night in the main dining room.

So I guess it's not that open flames are a not complete no-no so much as that they are only used very carefully in controlled environments. Certainly, many ships carry crème brulée torches - though they are usually locked up when not in use. (For that matter, there is even welding done on board, albeit very carefully.)

Now, one thing I can say is that every ship I have been on has had electric burners. Entirely aside from fire safety, for practical reasons gas on a ship would be rather difficult. :)

Doug, where you on a cruise? Do tell.

Checking in here after a long absence. I haven't read all the posts except the most recent few, but a few notes...

On QE2 they have open flames in the dining rooms, tableside flambés etc. I have not seen open flames on Baked Alaska though in a long time.

As for promenade decks, most new ships do have them. The HAL ships all have very nice ones that go all the way around the ship. Same for QM2. Most of the other ships have them in one form or another, but often they do not go all the way around the ship (though many do).

Ruby - PRINSENDAM and VOYAGER OF THE SEAS will make quite a contrast! Though they were built in the same shipyard and PRINSENDAM's designer, Njal Eide, was involved in designing the VOYAGER-class ships. (He previously designed most of the Royal Caribbean fleet, but took a lesser role in VOYAGER.)

VOYAGER OF THE SEAS and her sisters - there are eight of them now, the last three being considerably larger and thus considered a separate "class" by RCI - are amazing ships. They are not the kind of ships I like, but they are still amazing. They're even rather nice-looking externally, with more curves than most of these hulking modern things. But they do not feel like ships on board. They are not supposed to. And I like ships. Basically, they are magnificent ships for other people. In fact I've recommended them to quite a few people over the years.

I remember being in Cozumel on VOYAGER OF THE SEAS with a number of ships, one of which was BLACK PRINCE. Now for those of you that do not know BLACK PRINCE, she is a tiny ship, 11,000 GT or so, built in 1966 to carry ferry passengers and cars between England and Norway in the summer and passengers and cruise passengers refrigerated cargo between England and Holland and Spain in the winter... A very interesting little ship, emphasis on little! Now that was a contrast.

The contrasts between big and small ships can be interesting. Last year I was in Bonaire on QM2 and SILVER CLOUD was in. Rather a contrast. And long ago I was in Curacao on SEAWARD (which would practically be a small ship now) and one of the Sea Goddess twins was berthed next to us, and boy did she look tiny! (Those are the SeaDream twins now and they are so small their owner calls them "yachts", not cruise ships. Even the Seabourn ships are called "yachts", which is rather amusing considering the new SEABOURN ODYSSEY being built is slightly larger than the Saga sisters! She looks like a gorgeous ship but come on, 30,000 GT is not a yacht!)

And your comment about being blinded by the towering whiteness of the ship reminds me of my very first huge-ship encounter. That was on my very first cruise on Celebrity's HORIZON, a month or so before my fifth birthday. Now of course I did not know anything about ships and to a five-year-old just about any cruise ship seems pretty big (and HORIZON was actually a big ship for those days), but in some port or another - maybe it was Antigua - alongside came this giant thing called MONARCH OF THE SEAS. At the time she and her sister (MAJESTY OF THE SEAS) were the biggest cruise ships in the world except for NORWAY (which was not really a cruise ship). Even the five-year-old me could grasp that HORIZON was a puny little thing compared to this monster! The effect was rather like a solar eclipse, for one moment we on HORIZON's upper decks were standing in the sun, and the next we were quite literally in the shadow of this blindingly white giant. I recall my parents saying that they could not imagine ever sailing in something so ridiculously large. Famous last words... ;)

Qantas did absorb a domestic airline, Australian Airlines, but that was in 1992. (It previously only flew international flights.)

The only airlines that I can think of that it would have been code-sharing with on domestic flights in 1998 would have been one of the various regional carriers that are owned by Qantas and now operate as QantasLink. At the time they operated under their own names, Airlink, Eastern Australian, Southern Australian and Sunstate. The legal entities still exist (except Southern Australian) but they are all branded QantasLink.

Qantas also used to code-share with a small domestic airline called Impulse but that was later, and I think under the QantasLink name. It later bought Impulse and it became Jetstar.

I'm most certainly not a native of Southampton (or anywhere else in the UK), but I have seen Soton a lot of times and Shanks... Never. To me, Shanks is a brand of bathroom fittings. See here. The original QUEEN MARY fixtures are all Shanks, and there are a lot of Armitage Shanks wash basins etc. on QE2. (I have no idea what the original stuff was - what's there now all dates from the 1990s and 2000s.)

Ruby - I did meet Conte very briefly, but did not really have a chance to speak to him. At these events there are always so many people one wants to talk to and not enough in which to do it.

The ship looks great, no different than she did when I left her three months ago. She is in pretty good shape for an old lady!

Conte - It was a pleasure meeting you yesterday and I am very sorry (and a bit embarrassed) that I did not have time to chat. I hope to see you again soon and to be able to have a conversation next time!

Are Society members going to feel sentimental or have more of an interest in souvenirs and photos during the get-together?

Souvenirs would be difficult - the shops are usually closed in port. I imagine there will be a lot of photography going on, though, and of course everyone will probably feel sentimental. I know I certainly will, with the possibility (probability?) that it will be my very last visit to QE2. She is really an incomparable ship and I have been very, very fortunate to have the amazing experience of sailing in her.

Although not her last visit to the Port of New York, our local chapter of the Steamship Historical Society is having a cocktail reception on board. I'll be saying my fond farewell to the old girl.

I will be bringing along my mom who has not been on the ship since a bon voyage party sometime in the 1978-1980 time period that she does not remember well. I am looking forward to showing her around.

On another note, yesterday a couple of really beautiful photos of Ruby's namesake were posted here and here on the great web site ShipSpotting.com.

QE2's last voyage departs Southampton on 11 November 2008 and she will arrive in Dubai on 27 November 2008.

Here is the schedule for her final season; final calls in bold:

28 Apr - 05 May E803N Iberia in Bloom

Southampton-La Rochelle-Le Verdon-Bilbao-La Coruña-Lisbon-Southampton

05 May - 21 May E804 Mediterranean Adventure

Southampton-Lisbon-Gibraltar-Valetta-Dubrovnik-Trieste-Split-Corfu-Cadiz-Southampton

21 May - 02 Jun E805 Mediterranean Treasures

Southampton-Naples-Civitaecchia-Livorno-Cannes-Barcelona-Gibraltar-Southampton

02 Jun - 15 Jun E806 Land of the Midnight Sun

Southampton-Bergen-Trondheim-Gravdal-Longyearbyen-Tromso-Hellesylt-Geiranger-Stavanger-Southampton

15 Jun - 25 Jun E807 Atlantic Isles Idyll

Southampton-Bilbao-Funchal-Santa Cruz de Tenerife-Las Palmas-Lisbon-Southampton

25 Jun - 02 Jul E808 Norwegian Wonders

Southampton-Bergen-Hellesylt-Geiranger-Flåm-Stavanger-Southampton

02 Jul - 17 Jul E809 Mediterranean Splendour

Southampton-Lisbon-Caligari-Corfu-Dubrovnik-Trieste-Valetta-Gibraltar-Southampton

17 Jul - 20 Jul E810 Summer Getaway

Southampton-Rotterdam-Zeebrugge-Southampton

20 Jul - 31 Jul E811 Mediterranean Mosaic

Southampton-Lisbon-Propriano-Civitavecchia-Monte Carlo-Barcelona-Gibraltar-Southampton

31 Jul - 12 Aug E812 Lands of Fire and Ice

Southampton-Reykjavik-Akureyri-Hellesylt-Geiranger-Flåm-Stavanger-Oslo-Southampton

12 Aug - 22 Aug E813 A Taste of the Mediterranean I

Southampton-Lisbon-Alghero-Cannes-Barcelona-Gibraltar-Southampton

22 Aug - 27 Aug E814 Summer Getaway

Southampton-Bilbao-La Rochelle-St. Peter Port-Southampton

27 Aug - 10 Sep E815 Mediterranean Sojourn

Southampton-Lisbon-Caligari-Piraeus-Zakinthos-Palermo-Naples-Valencia-Southampton

10 Sep - 30 Sep E816 Autumn Colours

Southampton-New York-Newport-Boston-Bar Harbor-Saint John-Halifax-Quebec City-St.John's-Southampton

30 Sep - 10 Oct E817N British Isles Voyage

Southampton-Cherbourg-Cobh-Liverpool-Dublin-Belfast-Greenock-South Queensferry-Newcastle-Southampton

10 Oct - 16 Oct E818N Westbound Transatlantic Crossing

Southampton-New York

16 Oct - 22 Oct E818P Eastbound Transatlantic Crossing

New York-Southampton

22 Oct - 27 Oct E819 Autumn Getaway

Southampton-Bilbao-La Rochelle-St. Peter Port-Southampton

27 Oct - 11 Nov E820 Mediterranean Odyssey

Southampton-Lisbon-Caligari-Naples-Messina-Dubrovnik-Zakinthos-Piraeus-Gibraltar-Vigo-Southampton

11 Nov - 27 Nov E821 Voyage to Dubai

Southampton-Lisbon-Gibraltar-Civitavecchia-Naples-Valetta-Alexandria-Dubai

(I tried to format that in an easier-to-read way, but it doesn't seem to want to let me - sorry. :( )

So are you wearing a Dutch cap also? I'm confused. I recognize hers, but is yours a baseball cap or Dutch hat? Do you keep the cap that is perhaps presented at table? Do you buy it? Throw it overboard?

It is indeed presented at the table and afterwards you can do whatever you want with it. Don't give them any ideas about selling them; that would be really tacky! ;)

Ruby - Thanks for asking about the site. I haven't had much time to really work on it lately, so I guess the short answer to your question would be that I have gotten out of it what I've put in... At this point, not a lot. ;)

I think (hope) that it could be a lot more successful with more effort, but right now it's on the back burner. I've put in only minimal effort over the past few months; I really ought to be updating it a few times a week, but right now I've slowed down to once every few weeks... Just enough for the site to hopefully not look dead until I have the time to update it more frequently again.

As for a business plan, as it isn't a business yet, there isn't one. It has cost very little in terms of time and money so I just went into it on a whim to see how it would work out. My intentions were to be farther along then I am right now, but that's purely because I expected to be able to put in more effort.

Posting on the forums has not been a huge help either, as I haven't a great deal of time for that... I mostly hang out on this thread now. :) Were I to post a lot more, I imagine I'd get a lot more hits, but then the only reason I'm allowed to have a link in my signature right now is because it's not a commercial site. Once it turned into a business, that link would be an ad, and a sort-of competitor's ad at that, so it would have to go away.

I'm sorry I can't offer more concrete advice.

Fran - I have no idea what Mr. Herrod plans on doing to AEGEAN I, but I doubt she'll be stretched.

She looks like a rather nice little ship, actually.

Ruby and Donald - Dutch Night is an age-old HAL tradition. I think the hats are silly and refuse to wear them, but I still attend Dutch Night for the food.

It is not usually announced in the daily program, but you can certainly find out ahead of time if you ask your head waiter. Some people don't like the food.

I haven't done the Master Chef's Dinner thing, but it doesn't appeal to me. I don't like singing and dancing waiters, including Baked Alaska parades and the like. I might have to go just to see what it's like, but in order to do that I would have to strongly resist the temptation to book the Pinnacle that evening.

On another note, it seems that Mr. Herrod has acquired AEGEAN I.

Made my day!

Sir Jonathan who?