A few of us should not apparent cruisers. I’ve an irrational worry of dying by drowning and might’t bear the considered consuming three meals a day, day-after-day.
So the prospect of a 16-day voyage spherical New Zealand to Australia is alarming. Will I survive? Or will I disappear overboard, laden with meals, the heavyweight sufferer of some marine catastrophe?
New Zealand is a residing geography lesson – a rustic strewn with mountains, fjords, forests, glaciers, and lakes, house to the dolphin, whale, penguin, albatross, seal and sea-lion (there’s a distinction: the latter eat the previous for breakfast).
A spot to pause: The tiny port of Picton is a gateway to the winelands of New Zealand’s Marborough area
Dwelling, too, to the gorgeous blue agapanthus flower and the crimson-flowered pohutukawa, the New Zealand Christmas tree. And you will get oysters in all places.
It is a lengthy journey to New Zealand, so be sure to discover someplace to get well.
The Boatshed on Waiheke Island, a brief ferry experience from Auckland, is ideal – a boutique lodge on the water the place you possibly can start your acquaintance with this faraway land.
I am taken on an exhilarating experience across the bay on a Harley Davidson – 1800cc of shiny, macho steel. ‘Have you ever ridden an HD earlier than?’ asks my hunky ‘chauffeur’. No, however I used to have a Lambretta 125.
Coming again for extra: A excessive share of individuals on the Seabourn Odyssey are returning passengers
‘Simply lean once I lean,’ he says. I cling to his leathered waist and watch the world go by at pace.
My cruising worries start to evaporate once I meet the crew of Seabourn Odyssey.
‘Welcome house,’ they are saying as we embark – a curious selection of phrases, till you realise greater than half the passengers are returnees.
In our ship-shape suite, every thing is sparklingly clear (as a girl who enjoys scrubbing her entrance steps, I discover these items).
Captain Prepare dinner charted the shoreline of New Zealand 245 years in the past. In addition to unpredictable seas, he feared scurvy, brought on by an absence of Vitamin C, which ends up in suppurating wounds, lack of tooth and in the end dying.
No hazard of that on the Odyssey. I am unable to consider one other interval in my life once I’ve eaten so nicely, so constantly. Prepare dinner pulped vegetation to make vitamin beer and fed his males sauerkraut; I sip a glass of champagne and nibble a canapé.
That night time the whoosh of waves in opposition to the hull lulls me to sleep.
Taken for a experience: Sue took a tour of Waiheke island in speedy two-wheeled type – on a Harley Davidson
The ship has 450 passengers, 11 decks, 4 eating places, a spa, health centre, swimming pool, sizzling tubs in all places and a theatre bigger than Prepare dinner’s ship.
On day one, we disembark andhead for Rotorua and its unusual geothermal swimming pools.
‘Tours4Matures’ says a minibus signal — a reminder of the age profile. We rent a automobile and drive to see effervescent mud, sizzling volcanic craters and hissing ochre and inexperienced waters.
However why would you’re taking a shower in mud and threat getting it the place even the cleaning soap cannot attain? We get misplaced driving again and practically miss the crusing. Independence comes at a worth.
Crossing the Prepare dinner Strait to South Island, we anchor on the tiny port of Picton and take an tour into the Marlborough Excessive Nation, to a distant sheep station the place we meet Hailey Pitts.
She and her husband Jeremy farm 20,000 acres and rear 5,000 sheep. It is a laborious life, however their shining eyes are proof that they adore it.
As we cruise by means of Queen Charlotte Sound, stated to be Captain Prepare dinner’s favorite anchorage, peace envelops me.
I sit on our veranda watching the solar fade throughout the islands round us. What a great distance from the distant outdoor of that sheep station.
Idyllic: Waiheke island sits on Auckland’s doorstep – however feels far faraway from New Zealand’s largest metropolis
Ah, nicely – what’s for dinner? In Akaroa, we see Hector’s dolphin, the smallest and rarest on this planet.
In Port Chalmers, we climb as much as a memorial to Captain Robert Scott. He set sail from there in 1910 on his illfated journey to the South Pole.
The sundown is spectacular that night time and I consider Captain Scott and his companions because the purple ball within the sky disappears, abandoning a path of sunshine, first pink, then orange, then burgundy, till lastly blackness falls. (Making an attempt to explain a sundown is like making an attempt to explain intercourse – it at all times sounds trite. Let’s simply say it was shifting.)
On south, till we hit the final land earlier than the South Pole, the gorgeous Stewart Island. Due west – nothing however sea till the tip of South America. Due east – ditto. It is time to flip and head out to Australia.
It is practically 1,300 miles from the underside of New Zealand throughout the Tasman Sea to Melbourne. Gale pressure winds imply the ship could make solely gradual progress because it tries to keep away from pitching closely into the waves. My irrational fears return.
The crossing takes three lengthy days and nights, However I come to grasp how an enormous ship just like the Odyssey can deal with such seas. I chill out into the camaraderie that develops on board, and in the end we’re cruising into Melbourne after which alongside the coast to Sydney.
Calm comforts: Picton is a haven for sailors who’ve crossed the usually tough waters of the Prepare dinner Strait
At 6am on a good looking summer time’s morning, the Opera Home and the Harbour Bridge welcome us to a metropolis filled with promise. That afternoon, I watch from my lodge window because the Seabourn Odyssey units sail as soon as extra, again to Auckland.
Now another person is in suite 722. Another person is being made to really feel it is a voyage designed just for them. I confess to feeling proprietorial and never slightly emotional. I have to be a cruiser.
