AT SEA, Cruising The Tasman Sea – February 27

a bit too cool at the pool

Clear, 20 degrees, very windy

The Tasman sea (between New Zealand and Australia) is notoriously rough – or so I’ve heard. I’ve read about this, and have also heard it onboard, but so far things are OK. With one more day tomorrow before we reach Australia, we’ll see. In all of the days we’ve sailed, we’ve never experienced what I’d call terrible conditions. We’ve had rough seas over the years – swells of up to 3 metres, but we totally coped with that. With swells like that the ship certainly pitches and rolls, the pool is closed, and you need ‘one hand for the ship’, but nothing that even seems unusual. I know I should be careful what I wish for, but…

It was very windy today, so windy that balcony time was out of the question and the Japanese mojitos we had while we ‘cooled by the pool’ came without straws (paper of course) because they would have ‘just blown away’ – fine with me…I hardly need a straw!

The event of the day was selecting tours for our new Australian ports. We have 11 new ports to choose excursions for. We were told that the gong show that was choosing new tours for Fiji was ‘not the Regent way’ and that that wouldn’t happen again – guess what…it happened again. In the end, we got almost every tour we wanted, but that to me isn’t the point. Those of us who paid the least for their cruises, regardless of perk status, were given the last possible choice. This wasn’t explained to us, but it isn’t hard to figure out. When we hear from people who had the opportunity to choose their tours hours before us and they are in higher status rooms…that makes things seem a bit shady.

Anyway…I would agree that this isn’t the Regent way, but it seems like it is starting to be. Honestly, I don’t think I even care what I see in Australia…it will all be good, but I hate lines at the best of times and when there seem like there could have been a thousand better ways to deal it’s annoying.