Ovation of the seas has turned around. Any idea why?

[ozbrian]

Ovation of the seas was due into Dunedin tomorrow morning but turned around about an hour ago and is heading back towards Christchurch.

Weather looks fine with 1 to 2m swells. Does anyone know what is happening?

[magpie9]

When a ship turns back it is usually because of a dire medical emergency that they cannot cater to on board. Relax, they will makebup the time.

[ozbrian]

They have gone back about 60km's and are now retracing their exact route. Could be a man overboard scenario. . .

 

[magpie9]

Gosh, a mystery ... how intriguing. Have you seen the youtube clip...things cruise companies will never tell you. Tells you all  these things that can go wrong. Could be a small ship in trouble.

You must be arriving sydney wednesday, when I am getting on. Hope you get back😂

[ozbrian]

I'm not on board. My wife is cruising with her Mother and I've been keeping track of their ship on Marine Tracker. There were no smaller ships on the (re)route they took. As I said, they are now retracing their exact path but I don'tthink it would be a man overboard as they are travelling at 10 knots. I think if it was an issue like that they would be going a lot slower.

[magpie9]

Oh ok now I know..they are just circling to use up time. Ships have to do this so as not to get to port to early. They are booked for a pilot at a certain time and cannot get there early. Tracking your wife...good grief. Go to bed and stop worrying. 

[ozbrian]

haha, not tracking her. Just interested in their progress. She was complaining about the speed of the ship.

And you're right. I'm off to bed.

[MicCanberra]

Friends on the ship have said, nothing untoward happened, and they arrived as planned. Must have been just a timeliness issue.

[The_Big_M]

May have been a navigational test/calibration.

[MicCanberra]

Quite likely a multiple purpose activity.

[Kiwi Kruzer]

I think if you looked at most ships past tracks you would find something like this happens at some stage .. From Auckland to , for instance , Bay of Islands or Tauranga  , it is only a 3 hour run , but they all take overnight to do it......they either slow down or do  a few long slow circles.

Edited December 8, 2018 by Kiwi Kruzer

[MicCanberra]

Yep, they have just done it again at Milford sound.

[ozbrian]

plenty of traffic in the sound but Ovation hasn't sent out a signal for 11 hours on marine traffic which is where I saw her do the long slow circle as David said.

[Kiwi Kruzer]

Ive never seen so many boats in Milford before. Must be high season. Ovation must have gone incognito,

[MicCanberra]

Friend aboard says the weather is wet, visibility is poor for photos but the waterfalls are marvellous.

[ozbrian]

What he said  up there ^^^

Edited December 9, 2018 by ozbrian

[MicCanberra]

Nice, sort of, much better in person though.

[ozbrian]

agreed. they said with the rain their were dozens and dozens of waterfalls 

[boeckli]

6 hours ago, Kiwi Kruzer said:

Ive never seen so many boats in Milford before. Must be high season. Ovation must have gone incognito,

 

The number of vessels had me perplexed as well, so I checked a little deeper. If you overlay ships' names, you see they're all named "Sat-Ais", not actual passenger vehicles. No idea what they are - some kind of beacon maybe??

[The_Big_M]

Could be small sightseeing craft. It is a Sunday, and also Summer,  so number would be higher.

[MicCanberra]

2 hours ago, boeckli said:

 

The number of vessels had me perplexed as well, so I checked a little deeper. If you overlay ships' names, you see they're all named "Sat-Ais", not actual passenger vehicles. No idea what they are - some kind of beacon maybe??

 

Interesting.

[Kiwi Kruzer]

9 hours ago, The_Big_M said:

Could be small sightseeing craft. It is a Sunday, and also Summer,  so number would be higher.

Yes ,there are numerous small boats that cruise Milford Sound. Heres a link to the webcam at the jetty

http://www.takeabreak.co.nz/webcams/197/milford_webcam

[Hunter69]

Yeah; we had The Carnival Spirit; doing doughnuts out at sea back in June. The cruise Director said, doughnut's during his late afternoon announcements. he said it was to fill in time for the pilot charter next morning at Airlie beach. We had done some-thing similar coming into Darwin also. 

He reckon's it was after the re-fit, with a new hull coating, the ship was going up to 5% faster/efficent??

[MicCanberra]

They must have added a speed stripe.

[Hunter69]

It's driven by Italian's. They only know one speed. Flat-out...