Cunard Cruisers - How are things where you are ?

[Essiesmom]

9 minutes ago, *Miss G* said:

The Zaandam is a beautiful small ship, and somewhat quirky.  (Part of her charm.) She was built in 2000 so is nearing end-of-life.  There have been ongoing upgrades, so my feeling is she’ll be kept in service beyond the normal 25-year lifespan.

 

Looking forward to more of your pics!

 

Editing to add:  What is the name of that ship with the French flag?

The French ship is Le Soleal from Ponant.  EM

[NE John]

1 hour ago, *Miss G* said:

There have been ongoing upgrades,

Speaking of…some quick paint work. 

[NE John]

3 hours ago, *Miss G* said:

The Zaandam is a beautiful small ship, and somewhat quirky.  (Part of her charm.) She was built in 2000 so is nearing end-of-life.  There have been ongoing upgrades, so my feeling is she’ll be kept in service beyond the normal 25-year lifespan.

 

Looking forward to more of your pics!

 

Editing to add:  What is the name of that ship with the French flag?

She looks like a yacht. For an older ship - not bad on the outside. 

[*Miss G*]

10 hours ago, NE John said:

She looks like a yacht. For an older ship - not bad on the outside. 

 

A yacht is a good way to describe her.  She has a huge ornate pipe organ clock in the atrium.  It plays every day at noon, complete with moving statues!

 

 

This is her library, in three massive rooms:

 

 

 

 

 

And this is the women’s washroom across from the library!

 

[Host Hattie]

We're just getting ready to go home after a relaxing break in Pembrokeshire. We had friends to stay the last 2 nights and went out on a lovely boat trip yesterday. 

 

[rmsEtruria]

Magnificent—a sidewheeler still running on steam!

[sfred]

On 4/26/2024 at 1:17 PM, NE John said:

As someone strongly moved by cruising on the QE past the Gallipoli battle site on the Dardanelles, it’s important we don’t forget ANZAC Day. Especially for @roscoe39and @sfred  Even though it’s already tomorrow with you. Great words too Roscoe on your blog.

 

Thanks @NE John.  I just saw this post today when getting around to reading other Cruise Critic threads.  Mrs. sfred and I missed the Anzac day dawn ceremony this year.  We usually go to the one in Brisbane's Anzac Square, but we were already out of country, en route for a work trip to Morocco, and our short QM2 treat afterwards between Southampton and Hamburg. Hopefully we will be able to attend again next year.  Lest we forget...

[exlondoner]

@Host Hattie
Are you OK at work?

[*Miss G*]

1 hour ago, exlondoner said:

@Host Hattie
Are you OK at work?

 

What has happened?  😟

[Host Hattie]

2 hours ago, exlondoner said:

@Host Hattie
Are you OK at work?

Not really but thanks for asking  ....

[exlondoner]

10 minutes ago, Host Hattie said:

Not really but thanks for asking  ....

Metaphorical hugs.

[alc13]

From me, too, whatever it is.  Probably from all of us here.

Edited June 28 by alc13

[Lanky Lad]

For anyone who remembers Captain McNaught from his days with Cunard, he is now Captain Sir Ian McNaught KCVO MNM. Trinity House congratulates Captain Sir Ian McNaught on Birthday Honours award | Trinity House

[Host Hattie]

Congratulations Captain 

[D&N]

We went to Mandelieu-la-Napoule for lunch yesterday. A restaurant we'd passed on a visit last October that had a Gault & Millau badge outside. It was very nice. I didn't take any food porn pics. We had planned to visit the château gardens but it was closed for an event. We'd expected bright sunshine and dressed accordingly but in practice it didn't break through the cloud until about 1pm.

 

 

 

 

After lunch we had about an hour to waste as local trains west of Cannes don't run frequently. We went to a cafe to have some rosé while we waited. On leaving I noted they had a coffee machine like on QM2 but a model M39 DT/4 rather than the DT/3s on QM2. DT/3 or 4 seems to denote the number of coffee dosers.

 

[techteach]

Happy 4th of July!

[Bigmike911]

Here comes Beryl. As I have noted from time to time weather in South East Texas is always interesting. From cold to beyond hot at 98 f, with humidity, and now the lower coast will be battered by Hurricane Beryl which hammered the Leeward Island of Barbados and Granada, The Caribbean Islands of Jamaica and The Caymans, before slamming into Cancun on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, has entered the Gulf of Mexico and having regained some of it's power is expected to slam into South Texas between Corpus Christi, and Freeport.

 

The "dirty" side (north and east outer barriers) of the Hurricane with heavy rain and wind, will hit my area. It is expected to dump five to eight inches of rain from late Sunday to mid Tuesday. The winds are expected to be 35 mph with gusts above that. I live on the top of the Brazos and San Jacinto River Watershed, eighty miles inland, so there should be no danger of flooding, but everything else, including a planned refrigerator repair on Monday and a Doctors appointment on Tuesday will be on hold. 

 

Those who live closer to the coast will likely have storm surge flooding, and some damage from wind, but hopefully no deaths. Oh well, these are the things that keep life interesting.

[NE John]

4 minutes ago, Bigmike911 said:

Here comes Beryl. As I have noted from time to time weather in South East Texas is always interesting. From cold to beyond hot at 98 f, with humidity, and now the lower coast will be battered by Hurricane Beryl which hammered the Leeward Island of Barbados and Granada, The Caribbean Islands of Jamaica and The Caymans, before slamming into Cancun on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, has entered the Gulf of Mexico and having regained some of it's power is expected to slam into South Texas between Corpus Christi, and Freeport.

 

The "dirty" side (north and east outer barriers) of the Hurricane with heavy rain and wind, will hit my area. It is expected to dump five to eight inches of rain from late Sunday to mid Tuesday. The winds are expected to be 35 mph with gusts above that. I live on the top of the Brazos and San Jacinto River Watershed, eighty miles inland, so there should be no danger of flooding, but everything else, including a planned refrigerator repair on Monday and a Doctors appointment on Tuesday will be on hold. 

 

Those who live closer to the coast will likely have storm surge flooding, and some damage from wind, but hopefully no deaths. Oh well, these are the things that keep life interesting.

Good luck. The remnants may make it all the way up here later in the week. 

[exlondoner]

9 minutes ago, Bigmike911 said:

Here comes Beryl. As I have noted from time to time weather in South East Texas is always interesting. From cold to beyond hot at 98 f, with humidity, and now the lower coast will be battered by Hurricane Beryl which hammered the Leeward Island of Barbados and Granada, The Caribbean Islands of Jamaica and The Caymans, before slamming into Cancun on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, has entered the Gulf of Mexico and having regained some of it's power is expected to slam into South Texas between Corpus Christi, and Freeport.

 

The "dirty" side (north and east outer barriers) of the Hurricane with heavy rain and wind, will hit my area. It is expected to dump five to eight inches of rain from late Sunday to mid Tuesday. The winds are expected to be 35 mph with gusts above that. I live on the top of the Brazos and San Jacinto River Watershed, eighty miles inland, so there should be no danger of flooding, but everything else, including a planned refrigerator repair on Monday and a Doctors appointment on Tuesday will be on hold. 

 

Those who live closer to the coast will likely have storm surge flooding, and some damage from wind, but hopefully no deaths. Oh well, these are the things that keep life interesting.

All a bit grim, but it seems as if it is the sort of weather more and more of us are going to have to get more and more used to more often, even in the tranquil UK.

[Bigmike911]

17 minutes ago, exlondoner said:

All a bit grim, but it seems as if it is the sort of weather more and more of us are going to have to get more and more used to more often, even in the tranquil UK.

I have lived here long enough to know that these storms happen from time to time. Some are rough others easy, I cannot say the recent storms are any worse that those I experienced 60 years ago, Hurricane Carla at cat 4 in September, 1961, and the worst storm in American history was the Hurricane that hit Galveston, September, 1900.

 

But I learned to be prepared. Don't live in low lying areas that repeatedly flood, don't live on the coast, always have a good supply of non perishable food, a nice stock of drinking water, and have a 26 k.w. whole house back up generator.

 

With wide spread infrastructure issues, electricity is easily disrupted, and you don't want to be in Texas in weather that is 95f with dew points in the high 70's with out air/conditioning, and when we had the record cold in February, 2021 and there were power issues as the wind turbines froze and didn't generate electricity, I had power to run my central heating system. But then I was a Boy Scout and our motto is "Be Prepared".

[techteach]

@Bigmike911 I’ll be thinking about you and hoping all goes well.

[Bigmike911]

11 hours ago, techteach said:

@Bigmike911 I’ll be thinking about you and hoping all goes well.

Thanks Techteach, fingers crossed. It looks like a lot of rain for us somewhere between 4 and 8 inches. We will know by this time tomorrow, 10 am.

[Bigmike911]

The outer bands of Beryl arrived at 1 pm sharp, Sunday. Some wind but mostly heavy rain for a few minutes, but it has passed quickly. The lawn seems to have enjoyed the shower. I scooped pine needles and leaves out of the pool, which will likely be just the first time for this storm.

 

Beryl is moving quickly and should pass a few miles west of me tomorrow and by 2:00 p.m. be headed to the northeast, and gone from the locality. The expectation is for heavy rain, some wind, and our usual power outages.

 

Technology is  wonderful. In the lower US television satellite dishes are at 45 degree angle, and heavy rain easily interrupts the signal. My service recently introduced a feature that automatically switches to streaming delivery when the dish signal is interrupted. This works with recorded programming and I now longer play back a program I had recorded and get the message "signal lost" interrupting the recording. It's the little things.

[Bigmike911]

Beryl has come and gone, and we are living with her gifts. A 65 foot Elm tree came down and is partially in my yard and my neighbors yard and took out ten feet of wooden fence between out yards. The is a lot of debris, small branches from other trees, clusters of leaves from Oak and Sweet Gum, and more pine needles that we ever wanted or need.

 

The whole house back up generator came on about six am on Monday, and as of 4 pm Tuesday is still running. Internet is out (I am using a mobile hot spot) and the land line phones are out, and with it the alarm monitoring system. Most of the Woodlands, Texas is still out of power, and a call to the Dr office for the appointment today asked me to come to their Conroe Office.

 

I left one hour and fifteen minutes early and got there on time, A short stretch of the distance had traffic signals working. I longed for the UK round-abouts, So the US system of clearing intersections was in use. At each non working traffic signal the fall back is to stop, allow the vehicle on the right cross street to go, and then go around the intersection one at a time. It takes forever. Returning home I used a more direct route with No lights and it took an hour and forty-five minutes. 

 

The only businesses open were the HEB supermarkets who have back up power, and they were full because not only were people buying to grill on an out door grill, the stores are Air Conditioned and I think people were just enjoying the cool air.

 

This will pass. Tomorrow I will work in the garden bagging up debris for collection on Thursday We can be thankful that there were only a couple of fatalities in both cases trees fell on houses and crushed people. Sad. 

[Host Hattie]

Thanks for the update @Bigmike911.