New Zealand – days 0-3 (at sea, October 17-20)

A quick side note before I start: I’m still in the process of documenting the trip, so you may find that the links to the following day (which will appear at the end of each day’s post) may not be active straight away. If that’s the case, it means you’ve caught up to me! OK, here we go…

Cath, Max and I boarded the Sea Princess in Sydney, bound for the Fiordlands National Park at the southern tip of New Zealand’s south island.
And before you crucify me for my spelling, please allow me to quote the Wikipedia article:

Indeed, the name “Fiordland” comes from a variant spelling of the Scandinavian word for this type of steep valley, “fjord”.

The itinerary called for 3 nights and 2 days of cruising (Monday night to Wednesday night inclusive) the open waters of the Tasman Sea, with an arrival at Fiordlands on Thursday morning.
However, as luck and the weather gods would have it, we struck high winds and ‘rough’ seas on our first two days out of Sydney. At lunch time on Wednesday, the Captain announced that because of the conditions we were sailing in, we had not made the kind of speeds the itinerary had anticipated, and as such, we would have to skip the Fiordlands National Park and sail directly on to what was supposed to be our second port of call, Dunedin.
I put ‘rough’ in quotes because I didn’t really think the conditions we were in were rough at all. Maybe I’m just one of the fortunate ones… one of those for whom sea sickness doesn’t kick in until you have to physically keep your hand on your wine glass to stop it from sliding off your table. The gentle rolling of the ship that we were experiencing seemed to me to be the bare minimum of what one should expect when sailing the open ocean. But, be that as it may, the Captain (who probably felt much the same as I did) conceded that these were ‘rough’ conditions and that we couldn’t go any faster.
As a consequence, we didn’t get to sail through Milford Sound and the rest of the Fiordlands National Park…. an area that seasoned sailors consider some of the most picturesque waterways of the southern hemisphere.
While having a chat with one of the deck hands on Wednesday afternoon, he mentioned that about one in three cruises ends up having to skip the FNP because of weather conditions. Great.
Oh well, make that 4 nights and 3 days of open water cruising then. Dunedin, here we come.
As you can see, only one photo from these four days. A really nice ‘Tequila Sunrise’-inspired sunset shot.
About 15 minutes before I took this shot, I said to Cath, “We’re gonna see an amazing sunset tonight. Look at the haze over the water.” And sure enough…

Take me to: -> Day 4