and so it begins....Dec/Jan Circumnavigation of Australia on Regatta

[HilsTas]

Thank you for sharing your beautiful photos on your blog; I was born and bred in Ulverstone on the NW Coast of Tassie (still have relatives in Penguin) and the gorgeous countryside was my backyard.

As much as I love Melbourne, Tasmania is where my heart is!

 

Agreed Mumofnine - my family was from Turners Beach (4km from Ulverstone). I'm in Hobart now and understand completely your love of Tasmania!

 

Loved your photos on the blog cbb, and so pleased you had such a fabulous day for Cradle mountain and Dove Lake - all that gorgeous fresh Tassie air!! And thank you again for the great insight into your round Australia cruise.

[cbb]

in the blog Dave made mention of Weyerhauser forests, which is a reference to a US company that owns vast timber rights, harvests the trees, and replants...obvious by the straight rows the trees are planted in.

 

Some of the hillsides in Tas were clear-cut which made us wonder about erosion problems. But perhaps that isn't a problem in Tasmania. ,

 

We thought Tasmania was absolutely beautiful and reminded us of parts of the US mid-west with the undulating landscapes and shades of green planted in squares.

[HilsTas]

in the blog Dave made mention of Weyerhauser forests, which is a reference to a US company that owns vast timber rights, harvests the trees, and replants...obvious by the straight rows the trees are planted in.

 

Some of the hillsides in Tas were clear-cut which made us wonder about erosion problems. But perhaps that isn't a problem in Tasmania. ,

 

We thought Tasmania was absolutely beautiful and reminded us of parts of the US mid-west with the undulating landscapes and shades of green planted in squares.

 

Forestry is a very politically sensitive topic in Tasmania - jobs vs the environment. The plantation forests are not a major problem environmentally/erosion or politically wise, but forestry in the native forest areas is not as well received. A large part of the state is national parks and most of the South West area (about 20% of the land mass of Tasmania) is a designated World Heritage area. Lots of cool temperate rainforests down there. There are some amazing hikes around the state if you have time and fitness on your side.

 

The rainfall here is generally reasonable - thats why all the green paddocks mid-summer.

 

Hilary

Edited January 21, 2018 by HilsTas

[palakika]

Tassie looks lovely. What kind of trees grow there? We have many wonderful fir and pine forests here in NW, some owned and managed by Weyerheuser. Not as much logging these days. Dave's photos are lovely, as usual! Can't wait to see Tas in May. Was the ocean crossing smooth? Thanks.

[roothy123]

Sounds like it was a wonderful day in Tasmania! I forget, when is trivia? Or, to get to my real question, about how many hours total was your total adventure from when you started out to when you came back?

 

I guess I need to go look at the blog - I keep forgetting to do that.

 

Thanks again for the wonderful commentary!

[Aussie Gal]

We were so lucky with the weather we had in Burnie as when we arrived up into the National Park the sun was shining and it was 25C. Down in Burnie, it seemed to have been a cloudy day and when we returned at 4pm, it was trying to rain.

 

We left the area around Makers Mark at 9.30am and we arrived up at the car park at Cradle Mountain at 11am. We returned the car back at 4pm so we were away 6.5 hours. We spent about 45 minutes over lunch at the Cradle Mountain Resort Hotel.

 

It was a great day out in the fresh air and we loved our short time in Tasmania. We are lucky as we will be returning in early April. We will be driving our lovely U.S. friends from Denver around this special island which we always love to visit.

 

Jennie

[cbb]

roothy123- trivia is usually at 4:30, but depending on that day's itinerary or when the Lounge is needed it might be at 10 am or 4:00pm.

*******************

Today, Dave and I left the ship on the 1st tender -- before 9am. Tender ride was smooth and without incident. We all were a little anxious because we had missed all other tender ports on this cruise!

 

We were greeted by a very well dressed volunteer (looked like one of the kings on a playing card) and smiling volunteers wearing red shirts (easy to spot) handed us brown handled bags filled with maps.

 

Off on a shuttle bus to the top of the hill where town is, by way of some interesting side streets and locations.

 

At 3 locations there was a red banner with "shuttle" on it so that you could walk around town and if you grew weary you could make your way to a red banner and the shuttle bus would pick you up.

 

I had downloaded a map and walking tour from the Eden Heritage website so we took off on a walk through town down to the cemetery which was fascinating.

 

From there you could walk across the street and down an incline to the beach, which I did. It was a lovely beach with a nice curve but Dave stayed "up" and took pictures from there.

 

Deciding we did NOT want to walk back up the hill we walked back to the cemetery where there was a red banner, and public bathrooms, and a bus came in about 5 minutes that took us back up hill to town center.

 

We walked all around town using our walking tour info. We walked to the Killer Whale Museum and walked through the gift shop to the back for a nice view of the harbor.

 

Walk down the little hill to view the wall in front of the Museum that has mosaic tiled scenes of historic Eden: agriculture, whale harvests, timber production, and fishing. Beautiful art work!

 

From there we continued on down the other side of the hill towards the tender harbor. A few more crafts were available for purchase in a little market there. We returned to the ship just before noon.

 

We did not eat lunch in Eden, but some did and said the seafood was fresh and wonderful.

 

We really liked Eden. It is very small, about 3500 population, and historically was a thriving fish market that supplied most of the Sydney Markets as well as timber processing; today it is more geared to tourism.

 

The town hopes to have a dock built by 2019 to welcome even more cruise ships to the area and every person we talked to was very much in favor of the dock construction.

 

The town is busily trying to appeal to tourism by having a market for artists and artisans to sell their products. I was able to buy a small hand carved bird from rosewood for a friend....and ok....one for me as well.

 

There also appears to be an effort to rehab some of the older buildings into pubs, hotel rooms, cafes. It would be difficult to spend much time, and therefore much money, as Eden is now, but it is in such a beautiful location that the town is headed in the right direction appealing to the tourists.

 

Snug Cove is lovely, and several boats were at anchor there. Your secret weapon is all those wonderful volunteers we talked to!

 

So, well done Eden!

 

Tenders aboard and we're under way at 4:00--headed for Sydney and a flight home for us!

 

It's been fun describing our adventures, some unanticipated, but all is well. Thanks for sharing your comments!

 

Be safe, be happy....life is good!

[Emma Chisit]

It's been fun describing our adventures, some unanticipated, but all is well. Thanks for sharing your comments!

Be safe, be happy....life is good!

cbb...So glad Eden lived up to its name. Great pictures too Mr Wonderful and...

Thanks for taking us along on this circumnavigation of a continent....an island....a country....Whatever.

At any rate a unique itinerary which many of we Aussies have not done either...Yet.....

Safe travels home, and your bags also...d

[cbb]

emmachisit--i know you're speaking from experience when you send good wishes for my bags!

 

did you get the dishwasher installed yet? Until next time we talk......... big ol' hugs!

[Emma Chisit]

emmachisit--i know you're speaking from experience when you send good wishes for my bags!

 

did you get the dishwasher installed yet? Until next time we talk......... big ol' hugs!

 

Well, you are flying QANTAS. They managed to lose one of our bags for a couple of days between Auckland and Brisbane. After LATAM got them without problems all the way from Buenos Aires to Auckland. (And us over the Andes...)

Dishwasher is me. This is the Christmas holiday period in Australia. Nobody works... February will be better....

Hugs to you two too. Glad I don't have a long flight ahead of me....staying home from now on....

[palakika]

Thanks so much for your great travel log around Aussie. Dave's photos were also outstanding. Look forward to hearing about your next travel adventure! Safe journey home, Peace and Joy.

 

Francie

[tvmovielover]

cbb I enjoyed living vicariously through this circumnavigation almost as much as your world cruise 2 years ago. Please keep writing about your ocean journeys!

[H20mac3]

Thank you so much for sharing you wonderful journeys with us! We had the absolute pleasure to meet Peter and Jenny when we were on the Marina Lima to NY a couple of years ago. We were the Californians with the spring loaded shoes! Jennie was so kind and patient with all of my questions (we are new to cruising). CBB, you have wonderful joyous writing style thank you again for sharing!

[susans14]

Hey Porthopper101....I know you girl!!! You feeling better now that you've come out of 3 days of hibernation???

 

We can't wait.....and wish a big old bunch of worldies were with us!

 

How did you like the cruise?

[cbb]

Speaking for the both of us, I think we must honestly report we haven't placed this cruise high on our list of favorites.

 

Please remember that many of the things that happened on this cruise were NOT the fault of humans--just the way things were;

 

-missed sailing out of Sydney @ 6pm because lightning storm took out PA system so we didn't sail out until around 3:30 am when the repairs were made and the officials had cleared the ship to sail.

 

- missed 4 ports: Kingfisher Bay, Exmouth, Esperance, and Kangaroo Island, --all tender ports- due to high winds and currents making tendering unsafe.

 

- all of the ports we missed were new to us and the main reason we had signed up for the circumnavigation of Au. We have been been to AU before but the western coast presented new adventures for us so we were very disappointed to have missed them.

 

- after Bali we had 9 days at sea except for a stop in Geraldton and a last minute acquired overnight in Fremantle/Perth.

 

- we felt the food was not as divinely inspired as it has been historically. We sailed ATW16 and we were always pleased with our choices. Simple things such as cold baked potatoes in Terrace, MDR the food was luke-warm sometimes--Thank heavens for Waves at lunch and Terrace's Grill.

 

-Dave reports that the in-house entertainment was a little better than in the past, but due to the length of the cruise (34 days) required lots of outside entertainers, some of whom were not to his tastes--but we understand that is personal opinion.

 

- I heard from passengers that there were some plumbing issues in some of their cabins; we know personally of electrical problems in our cabin. Our phone died and the wiring,we were told, was due to corrosion from water inside the walls.

 

- I think the ship needs a deep cleaning around the laundry room. We like 7th deck mid-ship for Dave who gets sea sick. As soon as I walked down the corridor to our cabin I smelled mold & mildew in that laundry room area. We've lived in S Fla off and on for more than 40 years and I know mold & mildew. To me it represents the presence of a water leak somewhere that needs to be taken care of immediately.

 

- We did see men repairing something in the wall across from the laundry room that required big wrenches so without any evidence I suspect a water leak, but the smell did not go away. The cabin attendants were always washing walls and vacuuming, as they do, so it wasn't their fault.

 

-don't know much about shore excursions. OLife gave us 4 each and we used 1.5. Our shorex time in Alotau was cut in half because they didn't have enough buses for all of us....for whatever reasons. Our shorex time went from 4 hrs to 2. We used our OLife for the Papua New Guinea ports for personal safety reasons although everyone we met was very warm & welcoming.

 

-Some of the entertainment staff did not interact much with passengers either on board or as shorex companions....unlike ATW when the entertainment staff seemed to be part of the "family."

 

- We both got colds and in my case deep hacking coughs. When we were off ship the coughing began to diminish but upon return to the ship/cabin the coughing resumed. Many on board seemed to have the same cold/cough. I don't know how often they change/clean the a/c filters. Our cabin attendant was the same one we had ATW and took wonderful care of us --above and beyond.

 

- my illness morphed into my ear and I awakened with blood on my pillow & face and hair after a 4am bout of severe pain in my ear--yep....perforated ear drum so I spent the next 6 days getting cared for by the medical team who were wonderful. That probably has affected my feelings about the cruise, but the illness doesn't change those things listed above. (BTW....i rarely get sick and went for 180 days on Insignia with no health problems)

 

- it just didn't seem as if it was the same experience cruising this time as last time we were on board which was the extraordinary ATW16. We truly don't think we are comparing this cruise with that one but are trying to address issues that we noticed.

 

-we are scheduled for 2 more cruises in 2018. We have signed up for 2 B2B Grand Voyages in 2019. We, of course, will sail in 2018-- time will tell if we sail in 2019.

[cbb]

We love Australia--the people are so quick to help tourists and the volunteers at each port were very welcoming.

 

Our wonderful hosts Peter & Jennie rented cars in many of the ports so that they could share their homeland with us.....thanks to them we were able to see places that many others did not.

 

Thanks, Aussies!!

[cbb]

and finally.....

 

i wish O (and hotels, etc) would quit using cleaning supplies that are scented. Sometimes the number of smells from cleaning is overpowering.

 

if we could have unscented cabins and ships I would be a happy camper...

[susans14]

Speaking for the both of us, I think we must honestly report we haven't placed this cruise high on our list of favorites.

 

Please remember that many of the things that happened on this cruise were NOT the fault of humans--just the way things were;

 

-missed sailing out of Sydney @ 6pm because lightning storm took out PA system so we didn't sail out until around 3:30 am when the repairs were made and the officials had cleared the ship to sail.

 

- missed 4 ports: Kingfisher Bay, Exmouth, Esperance, and Kangaroo Island, --all tender ports- due to high winds and currents making tendering unsafe.

 

- all of the ports we missed were new to us and the main reason we had signed up for the circumnavigation of Au. We have been been to AU before but the western coast presented new adventures for us so we were very disappointed to have missed them.

 

- after Bali we had 9 days at sea except for a stop in Geraldton and a last minute acquired overnight in Fremantle/Perth.

 

- we felt the food was not as divinely inspired as it has been historically. We sailed ATW16 and we were always pleased with our choices. Simple things such as cold baked potatoes in Terrace, MDR the food was luke-warm sometimes--Thank heavens for Waves at lunch and Terrace's Grill.

 

-Dave reports that the in-house entertainment was a little better than in the past, but due to the length of the cruise (34 days) required lots of outside entertainers, some of whom were not to his tastes--but we understand that is personal opinion.

 

- I heard from passengers that there were some plumbing issues in some of their cabins; we know personally of electrical problems in our cabin. Our phone died and the wiring,we were told, was due to corrosion from water inside the walls.

 

- I think the ship needs a deep cleaning around the laundry room. We like 7th deck mid-ship for Dave who gets sea sick. As soon as I walked down the corridor to our cabin I smelled mold & mildew in that laundry room area. We've lived in S Fla off and on for more than 40 years and I know mold & mildew. To me it represents the presence of a water leak somewhere that needs to be taken care of immediately.

 

- We did see men repairing something in the wall across from the laundry room that required big wrenches so without any evidence I suspect a water leak, but the smell did not go away. The cabin attendants were always washing walls and vacuuming, as they do, so it wasn't their fault.

 

-don't know much about shore excursions. OLife gave us 4 each and we used 1.5. Our shorex time in Alotau was cut in half because they didn't have enough buses for all of us....for whatever reasons. Our shorex time went from 4 hrs to 2. We used our OLife for the Papua New Guinea ports for personal safety reasons although everyone we met was very warm & welcoming.

 

-Some of the entertainment staff did not interact much with passengers either on board or as shorex companions....unlike ATW when the entertainment staff seemed to be part of the "family."

 

- We both got colds and in my case deep hacking coughs. When we were off ship the coughing began to diminish but upon return to the ship/cabin the coughing resumed. Many on board seemed to have the same cold/cough. I don't know how often they change/clean the a/c filters. Our cabin attendant was the same one we had ATW and took wonderful care of us --above and beyond.

 

- my illness morphed into my ear and I awakened with blood on my pillow & face and hair after a 4am bout of severe pain in my ear--yep....perforated ear drum so I spent the next 6 days getting cared for by the medical team who were wonderful. That probably has affected my feelings about the cruise, but the illness doesn't change those things listed above. (BTW....i rarely get sick and went for 180 days on Insignia with no health problems)

 

- it just didn't seem as if it was the same experience cruising this time as last time we were on board which was the extraordinary ATW16. We truly don't think we are comparing this cruise with that one but are trying to address issues that we noticed.

 

-we are scheduled for 2 more cruises in 2018. We have signed up for 2 B2B Grand Voyages in 2019. We, of course, will sail in 2018-- time will tell if we sail in 2019.

I was also on the cruise with my husband and shared much of the disappointments you mentioned. This was my fourth voyage with Oceania. The first 3 were many years ago and my feeling was they are cutting costs big time since being bought by Norwegian Cruise lines( which has a lot of debt on its balance sheet). The quality did not feel even close to the other cruises I took those years back on Oceania. My cabin had air quality problems among others. I believe that the ship was not safe. I think people were getting that virus and it was made worse by mold. The cruise before ours had the generator break down and they missed several ports because of that. The ship was not hit by lightening- that was started by someone on the ship - that was a continuing issue from the generator breakdown.. I know they blamed not getting into ports because of weather but I and other passengers heard a different story. All in all this was the worst cruise I have ever been on . I know things happen on cruises but it was one thing after another. This is not the quality Oceania promises or has delivered- personally I love cruising but will probably never go on another Oceania cruise ever again . When on board I had booked with the ambassador woman and then promptly cancelled -I wrote to the company about what seemed like issues like mold, unsafe ventilation etc. I am still waiting for a response. The problem seems to be that since NCL took on 3.3 billion in debt to buy Oceania the quality is suffering. Those original cruises served mostly fresh fish and vegetables etc. this trip was ( with the exception of some shellfish they brought on in a few ports) ALL FROZEN. This is sad to me was a great product now a health hazard being run to squeeze every last dime out of it- I think the only profit center on this cruise was medical. That’s not good for the future. That helps their earnings in the short term but you can only operate like that 7ntil people take their business elsewhere.

[cbb]

susans14--

 

just out of curiousity why did you and others think we could not tender? We watched from our port side balcony the launch of the tenders and seeing the wave action break over the tenders we think they made the right decision--at least for Kangaroo Island.

 

We would not have wanted to board those tenders with the amount of water they were taking on. We had no problem with the cancellation of that port.

 

We have no 'insider info' on other problems, but do agree that Medical will make $ off of us-- hopefully our travel insurance policy covers my bills!

[Ken the cruiser]

Just got back from a 22 day HAL Antarctica cruise. But I'll save that story for when I post it on a HAL CC thread. Sorry your Australian circumnavigation went so badly. We were leaning strongly towards doing Oceania's circumnavigation in Dec 2020, if they have one as we've heard they weren't going to do one in Dec 2019. However, we've also recently heard doing the circumnavigation in October (springtime) like HAL offers versus in December cruise like O or Regent offers is definitely a better time to do it. After reading your above comments regarding the weather, we're now drifting back towards HAL and their "springtime" cruise.

[troubleclef]

I too was on this cruise and share your disappointments and concerns. I have some similar and additional highlights which I will be addressing to HQ in Miami: our problem with the ventilation (cabin 8048) was that it was noisy, it was either too hot or too cold, and there was intermittent exhaust fumes that happened late at night. Engineering was prompt in showing up and appeared to be interested in determining the source of the fumes but to no avail. The problem persisted. There was also the distinctive smell of mould when we stepped outside in the hallway. The carpet in our cabin was worn and stained, the lower trim along the patio door was falling apart and part of the seal on the glass patio door was not secured to the glass.

There were two floods (one in the spa which was shut down for two days and the other was in the engine room) there was also a fire in the laundry room on level 1 on January 22. 2018.

As for the food, I can appreciate that these comments are subjective but here's my two cents worth. I found the food for the first half of the cruise to be excellent. However, the quality diminished drastically once we left Bali. I later found out that we had a new executive chef that came on board in Bali. Even though I requested a no salt meal, (usually I just had an entree, no appetizers) the food was overly salty and in most cases I had to return the dinner which they quickly corrected. When dining with a group, there were many instances of the dishes not being plated properly and there were items missing. e.g. duck l'orange with missing coquettes, a daikon salad with no daikon. Another example of a decline in food quality is serving left over rosemary potatoes from lunch at dinner in the terrace . In this particular instance, I know for a fact that it was left over potatoes because I had the same potatoes for lunch. Now here's my beef, we were in Melbourne that day and there were a lot of flies and one can assume that there were some flies buzzing around the buffet in the Terrace, why then would the restaurant manager or whom ever was in charge re-serve food that was sitting in the buffet? ( I had a late lunch and saw them taking away the container of left over potatoes) Where was the Oceania environmental officer when all the flies were buzzing around in the Terrace?

I absolutely agree that since the NCL change over, there has been a decline in the quality of the "Oceania Experience" (this has been our 9th Oceania Cruise). The only part of the experience that has not changed is the service delivered by the staff. They do indeed go above and beyond to make sure that your needs are met. They are hard working, caring and compassionate beings. Now, if only corporate Oceania had the same attributes! The Regatta needs to be retired or needs a complete over haul. Sadly, I say goodbye to this ship. Thanks for the memories!

[Aussie Gal]

We too found the food not to be to the standard that we enjoyed on the Marina in April of 2016 when we spent the same amount of time on her as we did on the Regatta this cruise. The food on that cruise was outstanding and we were expecting a similar experience. Instead we found the food in the Main Dining Room to be very ordinary, not even as good as when we were on Princess last April, 2017.

We did enjoy the food in Polo though and we ended up eating there at least 6 times and in Toscano 3 times.

We being Australians, we couldn't understand why they weren't loading on to the ship our wonderful produce of fresh fish, scallops, prawns, meat and fruit and vegetables. We live in a country where bananas are plentiful and yet we ran out of them within a few days of leaving Sydney. We also ran out of yoghurt and other odds and ends. Also the fish served up was that awful frozen dover sole or sea bass, both unappetising and as for the frozen lobsters, why serve up those tiny ones from the East coast of the U.S. when they could have bought wonderful crayfish when we were in our southern waters.

I agree, I do think that NCL have had a big impact on Oceania and what was once a wonderful cruise line is now becoming just like all of those average lines where quantity outweighs quality.

 

Jennie

[Paulchili]

These are really troubling reports from people who have cruised on Oceania multiple times in the past and these reports cannot be simply ignored - they are not all from “one post wonders”.

I have noticed some changes over the many years on Oceania but nothing to the degree described here recently. We have 3 cruises booked for this year (Nautica & Marina - our 2 favorite ships) and we’ll pay close attention to what is going on compared to the established Oceania norms and base our future cruise plans on those experiences rather than just reports of others, no matter how troubling they are.

[Petoonya]

I agree, I do think that NCL have had a big impact on Oceania and what was once a wonderful cruise line is now becoming just like all of those average lines where quantity outweighs quality.

Jennie

Have been reading this thread to my husband and he said it feels like a dagger to the chest. We had an impeccable cruise on the then newly revamped Sirena last June- didn't give a thought to NCL. But sounds like the thrill might gone on Regatta.

[travelberlin]

Have been reading this thread to my husband and he said it feels like a dagger to the chest. We had an impeccable cruise on the then newly revamped Sirena last June- didn't give a thought to NCL. But sounds like the thrill might gone on Regatta.

We have just returned from our 35 days cruise with Sirena and our experiences were very good. I have written a live review on that cruise. We have also experienced frozen fish during our cruise and I have to agree that I do not like that. Unfortunately almost all cruise lines serve frozen fish on board. I do not know how this was before in Oceania, but this is more or less standard on ocean cruises with so many passengers.

Fortunately the overall experience at the Sirena was fine. I hope that what is being reported here on the Regatta receives the attention from headquarters. It is a pity that whatever happened with Regatta might deter others to continue booking with Oceania.

Ivi