En Route to Fremantle, Australia

During our seven days at sea traveling to Australia, a 3150-mile journey, we will be sailing through the Central Indian Basin with water over 13,000 feet deep. We will also be crossing the Broken Ridge, an oceanic plateau stretching for approximately 750 nautical miles, and the 90^th meridian, which divides the Indian Ocean into the East and West Indian Ocean.

Trying not to focus on the depth of water under the ship, for the next few days I’ll be writing about life on board the ship (the subjects in no particular order).

Passengers

The Queen Elizabeth holds approximately 2000 passengers. Sailing from Southampton, the passengers were from all over the world, with the majority being from the U.K. and Australia, followed by 149 Germans, and just over 100 passengers from the U. S. Approximately 200 of the passengers will be on the ship for the full voyage, returning to Southampton. 

When we arrived in Cape Town, many of the passengers got off in Cape Town with the intention of traveling to Victoria Falls before heading on to other places or home. At the same time, a number of Australians joined the ship.

We’ve met some very nice people from many countries, including the two couples we share a table with at dinner. To my disappointment, we haven’t met many Americans. This voyage may not have attracted the interest of a lot of Americans because of the added expense of flying to England to meet the ship.

On one occasion an older lady asked me if I was Canadian. When I said that I was an American, she looked surprised as though I had just announced that I had come from Mars. She didn’t know what to make of that, not expecting to find Americans on the ship. We did briefly talk to one American couple and discovered that we live within about five miles of each other. That was two weeks ago, and we haven’t crossed paths since then.

If I had to guess, I would say the average age of the passengers is 75, if not older. We are continually amazed at the determination of many of the passengers who have severe mobility limitations, some even traveling alone. This might be an older crowd, but they have lots of energy and an interest in seeing the world. They also are quite knowledgeable and provide keen competition at the trivia quizzes held all over the ship.

Most of the people are polite and thoughtful. One couple really impressed us. After doing laundry, John discovered one of my new SmartWool socks was missing. He felt bad about losing it since they had been a Christmas gift from my daughter and very good quality. Later, in the Lido buffet, he saw the older couple who had used the dryer after him and asked them if they had found it. The woman said that she hadn’t folded her laundry yet but would look and let him know.

While we were eating dinner the man approached us with three socks and asked if one of them was ours. None of them were, but we were so impressed that he had gone back to his cabin four decks below to check. A few minutes later, he approached us again, this time holding the sock. He had gone back to the laundry room to check again and found it in the dryer. We couldn’t believe how kind this elderly man was. He said he knew the value of a missing item. He was of an age and probably lived during a time when the loss of something as simple as a sock could have been a great loss. How fortunate we were to meet someone like that.

Crew

Members of the crew come from over 50 countries—a majority of them from the Philippines (nearly 600), including Kenneth, our cabin attendant, and Ronald, our waiter at dinner. We find them to be very sweet and friendly people. They sign on each year for a nine month or so contract and work everyday during that time, with an occasional break to go ashore. It is a hard life, with many of them leaving their families for long periods of time. In recent years, more women have begun working on cruise ships and are getting to see the world.

Misc. 

With long days at sea, we have lots of scheduled activities to keep us occupied, which I’ll write more about later. Today we heard another excellent lecture by Gloria Barnett, who calls herself the Wild Fish Lady, a title given to her by one of her young students. Again she showed some fantastic photos she took while deep sea diving all over the world. She said her favorite place to dive is the Philippines because of the variety of marine life. She only shows photos she herself has taken, but she highly recommended searching YouTube for “Spiny Lobster Migration.” She said it shows how the spiny lobsters join together to travel to deeper water along the Florida coast during rough weather and is quite amusing.

She also showed videos she took of the variety of fish we saw at the Two Oceans Aquarium—the one with the huge lips. The fish feeds by pushing its lips out of its mouth attached to a long white tube several inches long to suck in smaller fish with the misfortune of swimming by. It was like lips on the end of a vacuum cleaner hose. Really strange.

She talked about things we can all do to help protect the oceans and also about the 14-year-old boy who invented a device that has the potential of ridding the oceans of plastic. So there is hope for our oceans.