Virgin Cruiser

[Skyring]

For as long as I can remember, I've been reading tales of the sea. Long John Silver, Horatio Hornblower, Captain Bligh. They'd snuggle up beside me in the back seat of the family car, curl up with me in bed, sail away with me until dawn and a new schoolday.

 

More recently, Patrick O'Brian and his wonderful Aubrey/Maturin saga. Together we crossed and recrossed a dozen seas. These books could be read time and again, and each time I'd only need to put my head on one side, and I could hear seagulls, the crash of breakers on an iron-bound shore, the wind in the rigging...

 

But, like my dreams of flying along with Biggles and the great Waldo Pepper, it was all just dreams. Happy dreams.

 

There was the Manly ferry, the ferries across Cook Strait and the Channel Islands, greeting my Navy wife at the end of a cruise on the Grey Funnel Line, but the closest I ever came to a real ocean voyage was a night crossing of Bass Strait on the old Spirit of Tasmania. And back again a week later.

 

I leant on the rail and gazed out on the moon-silvered ocean. Got up in early morning and breathed in the salt air. Looked on the horizon for the gleam of topsails. I loved it.

 

But it's far more convenient to fly, and I've been around the world four times in the past three years, looking down over endless expanses of ocean, occasionally seeing some dot from ten kilometres up and wondering.

 

This trip, as I planned our flights to London, my wife, who does not have the romance of flight in her soul, looked up and asked, "Why don't we take a cruise instead?"

 

She'd seen a television travel show featuring round the world and repositioning cruises, and it emerged that the Funchal was sailing from Fremantle to Harwich about the same time we wanted to travel. Good price, too.

 

I was keen, but a little research and mixed reviews emerged. An older liner with few modern amenities. I really didn't want to journey back in time to the Seventies, not if we were paying several thousand dollars each.

 

More research and P&O's Aurora emerged as the most attractive, once we looked at times, prices, features and itinerary. The biggest drawback was that she berthed in Southampton a good three weeks before my convention in London.

 

But, I thought, I can fill that time in nicely, by showing my wife Guernsey, Normandy and Paris at a leisurely pace. I love Paris, and so does my wife, but we haven't been there together. Not yet.

 

Oh yeah. Immediately after the cruise, I booked two nights in Portsmouth. I could tour Nelson's Victory and satisfy any number of boyhood dreams. With a bit of luck, I could assemble a scratch crew of tourists and sail her away before anybody noticed. Give the Frogs another lick of the British Empire.

 

Off to the travel agent, another complex set of requirements to deal with, another big bank cheque. But I've got months of dreaming ahead.

[Pontius Navigator]

You write eloquently and wax lyrical.

 

You should also add Neville Shute to your reading list and mug up on Masefield, Oh to go down to the sea again . . .

 

Enjoy your cruise. Visit the Mary Rose too and possibly the Cutty Sark and cry.

[Skyring]

Thanks, PN! Neville Shute is an old friend. I'll be updating this as I go along, but at the moment I'm working up to embarkation in just over a month and there won't be a lot to say. I'm considering taking a day off on 14 February to go see Aurora enter and leave Sydney Harbour, with the possibility of some great photo opportunities.

[Host Sharon]

You'll never look back!! Imagine the feeling sailing into the Venice lagoon as those sailors of old once did.....or traversing the Arctic Ocean to Iceland, all the while wondering how on earth the Vikings survived the gales and fogs....or what it was really like on the Arctic convoys of WW2? Enjoy Aurora - she's my favourite ship.

[daiB]

Thanks, PN! Neville Shute is an old friend. I'll be updating this as I go along, but at the moment I'm working up to embarkation in just over a month and there won't be a lot to say. I'm considering taking a day off on 14 February to go see Aurora enter and leave Sydney Harbour, with the possibility of some great photo opportunities.

 

Hi Skyring,

 

I hope you realise what you are getting yourself into here. Cruising gets into your soul and you are hooked, addicted as if you took the latest 'drug'. No other form of holiday or travel will satisfy you again. Your bank balance is in great danger, the craving will grip you, you will have to cruise again, and again and again.

 

We started with a silver wedding treat and look at us now. 10 cruises done three booked and cannot wait for the P&O brochure in April/May to book more.

 

 

Be Warned:cool:

 

 

 

 

:):)Happy Cruising:):)

 

 

 

:cool:

 

Dai

[Host Sharon]

You write eloquently and wax lyrical.

 

You should also add Neville Shute to your reading list and mug up on Masefield, Oh to go down to the sea again . . .

 

Enjoy your cruise. Visit the Mary Rose too and possibly the Cutty Sark and cry.

 

The SS Great Britiain in Bristol is also worth a visit - as the first proper liner and built by Brunel. The cabin reconstructions are amazing.

[Dorset Cruiser]

Skyring

 

You could also try Chatham Historic Dockyard. My husband started there as a yardboy 44 years ago!! It is no longer a working dockyard but as its name suggests, it is full of historical naval history. We now live on the South Coast in Weymouth, Dorset. For a sealoving man, there is so much for you to see. Enjoy your cruise - you will get addicted - we are off on our 15th cruise in April - our last one was to NZ and Australia last year and we absolutely loved it - would love to go back but there is such a lot of ocean around the world that we are spoiled for choice.

 

Chris:D

[Skyring]

I'm usually my own travel agent. Nowadays it's easy to book flights, hotels, cars and so on over the web. I do my research, check connections and transfers and amenities - like wifi availability in hotels, or automatic transmission in cars, or upgradable seats on my flights - hand over my credit card number and print out the confirmation emails.

 

But the big things need a travel agent. I've done four round the world trips and each one needed an agent to book it for me. These things are reasonably complex, with the rules about six flights in North America, four flights in Asia, cross the Atlantic and Pacific once each etc. I can't do it on the web.

 

Likewise a cruise booking. If there was a way to book my preferred sectors over the web, I couldn't find it.

 

My wife and I put our heads together as to the type of cabin we wanted. There were two different views, looking at discussions on cruise-related web forums. The first was that the cheapest possible cabin was the best, because you only returned to the cabin to sleep. Inside cabins on low decks were the cheapest, and that suited my wife, who was somewhat alarmed at the escalating cost of the holiday. Not only was the cabin price on the Aurora about 15% more than for the Funchal, we'd also have to pay for an extra couple of weeks swanning around Europe because the Aurora arrived in England that much earlier. Pleasant thought it would all be, this holiday was getting expensive.

 

The second view on cabin selection was that a balcony was such an immense convenience that it made no sense to have any lesser cabin. It was a private area where you could sit and relax, an extra bit of space and seating to watch the sun go down with a drink in hand.

 

My wretch of a wife calculated that for the two fares, it would cost us about $100 a day for an outside cabin with a window, over an inside cabin without. Over the thirty days of the trip that was a fair dollop of dough. The additional cost of a balcony cabin didn't bear thinking about.

 

I would have loved a balcony, but I at least wanted a window. I'm the sort of guy who always gets a window seat when flying, and the thought of spending thirty days in a windowless box was not one that made me comfortable. Sure, we could always look at the ship's webcam on the incabin television to see what it was like outside, but that's a bit like regarding the world through a cellphone camera for my taste. I wanted to be able to pull aside the curtains in the morning and decide if it was worth having a shower and shave and get into decent clothing just to go outside.

 

So my selection, when I turned up at the travel agency, was for the cheapest possible outside cabin. Low down and forrard, but with a window.

 

New travel agent. The delightful and capable Tessa who had arranged all my big trips in the past, was no longer working, and instead I got a lady who seemed to have a good deal of experience in the industry.

 

I outlined my requirements. I wanted a cabin booked on the Hong Kong to Southampton sector, flights to Hong Kong and flights back from London. In addition I wanted hotels at both ends and to bring my two children (18 and 21) with me to Hong Kong for four nights and then send them back home to mind the house.

 

She rattled away on her computer for a while, asked a few questions, made a few bookings, handed me a few brochures on tours in Hong Kong, and told me that another company handled cruise bookings and she'd get back to me.

 

I left with the brochures, pored over the delights of Hong Kong, selected a day tour around the island, and waited for the call.

 

At this stage I should mention that my wife was awake up to the possibilities of shopping in Hong Kong, or rather Shenzhen just across the border. Tailored clothes could be had quickly and cheaply. Looking through the requirements of a P&O trip, I found that I needed a dinner suit, and as my existing suit had long since ceased to fit me and was now the property of my somewhat more slender son, I ticked Shenzhen as a place to get one run up.

 

The travel agent gave me an update. Still working on a cabin. Cabins were very scarce.

 

I looked at visa requirements. Hong Kong didn't need a visa, but going over the border into China proper did. India, where we were to make a stop in Mumbai, needed a visa as well, and they had to be arranged ahead of time - we couldn't get one on the ship or in the cruise terminal.

 

Luckily, we live in Canberra, where embassies and high commissions abound, and it would be a matter of turning up, paying a bit of money, handing over our passports and collecting them a few days later.

 

Eventually the travel agent called back. She'd been about to tell me that no cabins were available, but one had opened up at the last moment. This was late 2007, months before the ship had even left, so I began to get an idea of just how popular these round the world cruises were. Given the immense cost, I had thought that they might be scrambling to sell tickets.

 

I reviewed the rest of the arrangements. Flights were from Sydney, rather than Canberra. "Our ticket wholesaler only does Sydney flights", I was told. Blast. We'd have to find our own ways between Canberra and Sydney. I knew that Qantas would have new competition on that leg from Virgin after many years of monopoly, and that consequently prices would be low, but still it was going to be an extra few hundred dollars whether we flew or made other arrangements.

 

The hotel in Hong Kong was the "Harbourview", which sounded promising, even if I couldn't find it on my guidebook map. The hotel in Portsmouth at the other end was about three hundred dollars a night, but I figured that a luxury hotel wouldn't go astray. Just my wife and I on a long romantic trip, and we'd be glad of some decent room, maybe a spa bath, after a cramped cabin and a salt-streaked window.

 

I turned up at the travel agency, credit card in hand, looked at the total figure, gulped, went around to the bank for a cheque, and paid up.

 

Let the dreaming commence!