Thursday, April 11th
We arrived offshore Galle at 9am as planned this morning. There is no docking facility in this port so we had to anchor about 3 miles off the coast near the city of Galle. We would then be taken ashore in the ship's life boats. This is called "tendering". There were some swells this morning so they put one tender in the water to see if they could safely get passengers on and off of it. Our Captain was standing out on the bridge wing which is just above our balcony. I could see and hear everything he said on his radio to the tender driver and staff captain who was positioned down on the gangway docking device for the tender. The staff captain was reporting over 6 feet high swells and the tender was bobbing like a cork in the water. The Captain repositioned the ship several times to try and negate the swells to no avail. I then heard him say on the radio, "No bloody way" (our Captain is Scottish). A few minutes later he came on the PA system and informed us that it was not safe to do the tendering operation so we would weigh anchor and head on up to Colombo, our next port destination. We probably did not miss much here anyway. So now we are sailing again and will be arriving at dock (yes we can dock in port here) between 4 and 5pm today. It's not that far away.
The internet is terrible again today. I think there are just too many people trying to use it at same time. I was finally able to get yesterday's blog posting on. Not sure if I can get photos on later today or not. Here are some photos I took this morning.
Map showing Galle, which we could not get into.
Hindu temple using telephoto lens from ship
Captain on the port side bridge wing.
150 person life boat to be used as a tender today.
Captain John McNeill above our suite on the bridge wing
Ship's officers decided to make our lunch today on pool deck since we are sailing on to Colombo after aborting going ashore in Galle. It was hot and they were sweating a lot!!
Our Captain and Food & Beverage Manager manning the grill.
Safety Officer, handling cold sandwiches
Anna (French), head of housekeeping, making pasta.
Franck (French), our general manager, making pasta.
Conny (German), our executive concierge, handling the ice cream station.
Crina (Romanian), our new assistant Food & Beverage manager, making some kind of green drinks.
Ray, our cruise director, manning the dessert table.
https://goo.gl/photos/buw3keBEizUuXgSD8
https://goo.gl/photos/WUibC11RoYfM8D8C9
We arrived offshore Galle at 9am as planned this morning. There is no docking facility in this port so we had to anchor about 3 miles off the coast near the city of Galle. We would then be taken ashore in the ship's life boats. This is called "tendering". There were some swells this morning so they put one tender in the water to see if they could safely get passengers on and off of it. Our Captain was standing out on the bridge wing which is just above our balcony. I could see and hear everything he said on his radio to the tender driver and staff captain who was positioned down on the gangway docking device for the tender. The staff captain was reporting over 6 feet high swells and the tender was bobbing like a cork in the water. The Captain repositioned the ship several times to try and negate the swells to no avail. I then heard him say on the radio, "No bloody way" (our Captain is Scottish). A few minutes later he came on the PA system and informed us that it was not safe to do the tendering operation so we would weigh anchor and head on up to Colombo, our next port destination. We probably did not miss much here anyway. So now we are sailing again and will be arriving at dock (yes we can dock in port here) between 4 and 5pm today. It's not that far away.
The internet is terrible again today. I think there are just too many people trying to use it at same time. I was finally able to get yesterday's blog posting on. Not sure if I can get photos on later today or not. Here are some photos I took this morning.
https://goo.gl/photos/WUibC11RoYfM8D8C9
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