No Shortage of Activity While Sailing Great Barrier Reef

Days 45-48, 2025 Grand World Voyage

Tuesday to Friday, Feb. 18-21, 2025; Cairns, Queensland, Australia, and At Sea.

Three consecutive sea days! What a welcome – and lazy – break. It’s not that we have been overly busy with a long string of port days. But the ship atmosphere changes when we all stay on board.

We certainly haven’t lacked activities. There are the usual future port talks, lectures on various subjects, and bridge, crafts, art, sports, cooking classes, etc. I’ve mentioned before that the entertainment staff is determined to have a special event on every sea day and on many port days. Today will feature a pool party. Two days ago, staff transformed the Lido Pool area for the now-traditional Glamp Out, with (fake) campfires, a canoe in the pool and a special camping menu including beer-can chicken, sausages, campfire beans and S’mores. The movie A Walk in the Woods was shown against a large sheet.

I missed the Glamp Out, as I had dinner two nights in a row in the Pinnacle Grill – one hosted by my travel agency and another with friends from previous world cruises. Both nights featured the Canaletto Italian menu, which I really like. On such a long cruise, Canaletto on the Lido deck is seldom even partially booked, so this year they moved it to the Pinnacle space on some nights. That frees up the Canaletto’s deck 9 kitchen area for a nightly custom stir-fry buffet.

If you like to see the sea, there’s no better place than the Crow’s Nest, with its Deck 10 expanse of windows looking forward. In the tropics rain isn’t unusual, and from the Crow’s Nest we frequently see little pockets of rain scattered along the horizon.

When I crossed the Atlantic Ocean several times on the Windstar in the 1990s, the officers would steer around the rain. The ship lacked much inside public space so most passengers lounged outside. On the Zuiderdam we just plow ahead, letting the short-lived showers wash the salt off the windows and decks.

Yesterday was unusual. It rained all day, and not light showers. I woke up at 4 a.m. to the almost constant sound of thunder and the flash of lightening.

 One of the consequences of a ship that continually bows and flexes at sea is that pipe joints can loosen. When it rains, towels and even buckets collect the occasional drips. Yesterday, we declared the constant drips a feature – after all, not many cruise ships can advertise an indoor waterfall.

As we cruised over the Great Barrier Reef, we moved through hundreds if not thousands of large jellyfish. My friend Tom Sinclair got better photos than I did and graciously shared one.

The Rolling Stone Lounge was full for today’s coffee chat, another in a series of Zuiderdam couples. Dining room hostess Josephine and beverage director Edmond are always popular. We’re amazed at Josephine’s ability to not only know everyone’s name, but also their cabin numbers. Sometimes early in a cruise she has to remind some passengers what cabin they are in.

She and Edmond entertained us today by recounting how they met (“you always tell it differently,” she told her husband), things we might not know about them (they have seven dogs and 100 birds – mostly finches) and their pride in their 11-year-old son who today is representing his school in an academic competition.

Captain Friso and his partner, future cruise consultant Chantal, sat in the coffee chat hot seats earlier this week. He will be leaving in Singapore at the end of the month as Captain Frank takes over. Like most Holland America captains, they have three-month contracts, and these two have shared the world voyages for the last three years.

Sadly, the voice of the Zuiderdam has been missing the last few days. Cruise and travel director Kimberly has lost her voice. Entertainment director Erika and her staff are filling in.

I so enjoyed painting small postcards recently that I bought a small pad of Arches professional grade paper in Sydney and am spending parts of our sea days creating 4×6-inch miniatures. It’s a real change from my original plan to paint 8×10-inch paintings. And it does go a bit faster, but not as quickly as I thought.

In Cairns I sketched what might be my last larger work, an older building in a sea of lush green plants and trees. I thought I had found the idea location to sketch – a shaded table at a waterfront restaurant – but the hostess absolutely refused to let me sit at the four-top with the great view, even though I told her I would order lunch and only one of the dozen or so tables was occupied. An hour later when I left the area, I noted that not another customer had appeared there. Fortunately, most establishments are more welcoming.

On previous visits to Cairns, I snorkeled at the Great Barrier Reef (a two-hour boat ride away), traveled via train and gondola to the mountain town of Kuranda and visited the resort of Port Douglas farther up the coast. Cairns is a good-sized city, with restaurants and souvenir shops amid museums, grocery stores and a shopping mall. This time I retraced my steps from earlier trips to visit the marina, the protected lagoon and waterfront. Too bad the new observation wheel doesn’t open until March.