The following morning, Sunday 1st May, was hot and sunny, with not a cloud in the sky. I got up late, partly due to feeling lazy and partly due to the inside cabin being as black as a coal cellar at midnight and consequently not having a clue whether it was day or night.
Cunard's Queen Elizabeth was due to dock in the cruise terminal at 1300, so I went on deck and waited for her to arrive. Patsy was already there but the ship was late so, instead of turning round in the river, she was put in behind us bow forward. As
Queen Elizabeth approached, people poured out on deck to watch her approach and be stuffed into her dock. It was a tight fit, between ourselves and some Rhine river boats opposite, and we were half expecting a prang, but the pilot, captain and tugs all knew what they were doing and QE went into her berth with (little!) room to spare. It was around 3pm before she was alongside.
Click on photos to see larger ones.
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| Not much room! |
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| Very little space between the QE, us and the river boats opposite. There was actually less room than it appears in this photo. |
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We were scheduled to depart at 5pm but were delayed slightly because some people were late back to the ship, having got lost in Amsterdam. They'd phoned the ship to tell them they were late, luckily for them they had the number.
While we were waiting to leave, a very loud ship's horn sounded from somewhere. It sounded like a Tyfon horn, of the sort QE2 had and similar to Vision's own horn. It wasn't us and, from the direction of the sound, it wasn't Queen Elizabeth either. The small mystery was solved as a sailing ship passed us, with a ship's horn mounted on deck and a bloke with ear defenders on pressing the button at regular intervals.
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| Picking up the tug (Svitzer Medemblik) |
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| Our escort. This ensured that small boats and other vessels didn't get in the way. We had the pleasure of seeing the crew give a WAFI and a small open boat a right telling off for coming too close. |
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| Local ferry |
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| Rochdale One again. This rather cute ship is a former Soviet cruise ship, now a static accommodation ship. |
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| Tanker Cape Bruny |
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| Through IJmuiden locks, with the gate closing behind us as we head back out into the North Sea |
Next stop, the final stop, would be Copenhagen in Denmark, over 500 nautical miles from Amsterdam and it would take two nights and a day to get there, at 17 knots.
The night we left Amsterdam I tried to get some interior views of the ship, including a couple of very nice models in the Crown and Anchor Study on Deck 8. One model was of the SS United States (I think I heard somewhere that RCI own, or once owned, the United States) while the other was of Vision of the Seas. I used ISO 'stupid hundred' (my camera ISO goes up to 6400, with a High setting of ISO 12800) to get the photos because the models were in glass cases and flash would just reflect off the glass, so I used ISO 6400 rather than 12800 which is very much for 'emergencies only'. The Canon 7D handles noise very well, and the photos only needed a little noise reduction.
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| SS United States |
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| Vision of the Seas |
At the centre of the ship, several decks high, there is the Centrum. At the bottom of this, on Deck 4, is an area where there is usually a band playing in the evenings. On the nights we were there, one of the entertainers was an Elvis impersonator and he actually wasn't bad. The lighting was neon whose colours changed from green to blue, pink and back again and the effect was quite pretty.
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| Looking down at the entertainers. This one was an Elvis impersonator. |
There was a huge sculpture hanging down through the Centrum, I am not sure exactly what it was supposed to be but, to me, it looked like a dinosaur skeleton of some sort, or HR Giger's 'Alien', from the Sci-fi horror film of the same name.
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| The 'skeleton' sculpture |
The next day, Monday 2nd April, we were at sea and cruising along the coast of Denmark but for me another pressing concern had arisen - Saints were away at Plymouth this afternoon. Win and automatic promotion was all but assured, we'd be three points clear of Huddersfield Town, with one game to go and a massive, insurmountable, goal difference of 18 in our favour. Frustratingly, the ship's satellite system went down, so there was no internet and no mobile phones meaning I was unable to find out the score. It really was annoying but there was nothing that we could do until we came within range of Denmark's mobile phone networks and could get a signal.
Patsy was eventually able to get a signal from the Telenor system of Denmark and look at the BBC Sports website. Full time result: Plymouth 1, Saints 3. YES! WE ARE GOING UP! Saints are effectively promoted back to the Championship, barring a highly unlikely turnaround in goal difference in the final game this coming Saturday (May 7th). It'd need Huddersfield to win 18-0 and us to lose, or them to win 8-0 and us lose 10-0 or something equally daft. Saints' final game this season is against Walsall at St. Mary's. Unfortunately I can't go as it's a sell-out (should have got a ticket before I left!). Hopefully, we'll go out of L1 in style by beating Walsall and by going up on points difference rather than goal difference if Huddersfield win their game. It may send Walsall down if Dagenham and Redbridge win, but I don't care about that, it'll be good to get out of this crap league at last.
One night of the cruise was left, we'd dock at Copenhagen at 0700 on Tuesday May 3rd and get off the ship at 0800. I'll put that in the next - and final - part.
