Wednesday 7th May

Well when we went to bed there were three of us, when we got up there were just two of us. Poor old Victoria was missing! Gone! Not a trace! We scanned the horizon but to no avail, a little shiver went down our spines, who will be next? Us or Queen Mary 2? Conspiracy theories began to circulate, had Cunard competitors started to pick us off one by one, after yesterday’s triumphant coup. Alas all this was nipped in the bud when the captain announced during his midday broadcast that during the night one of Victoria’s passengers had been taken ill and they had to make full speed towards Vigo in Spain in order to get them to hospital asap. So we ploughed on towards Cape Finisterre (literally Cape end of the earth) from whence we commenced our crossing of the Bay of Biscay which is (as always) like a mill pond, it’s reputation has been greatly exaggerated since the days of sail when it’s shape rather than it’s waves was the kiss of death. We expect Victoria to catch us up later as we are only doing 17.4 knots.

It’s the last formal night of the voyage tonight another nail in the coffin of the 2014 world cruise we are almost down to hours to do rather than days to do. Oh! And by the way, thanks to Viv who spotted this story in the Daily Mail, talk about on the ball.

By eleven pm queen Victoria had caught us up and once more we were family. Tomorrow is our final full day.

Thursday 8th May

Well we woke to our last full day on board and a typical UK miserable day welcomed us, thick fog, grey sea and the drone of the ships fog horn every two minutes. Oh misery! We got up and peered through the gloom to see if we could see our ‘sisters’ no luck, we could hardly see the sea. So, showered and dressed we trudged up to breakfast and the first thing we noticed was that they had not put the sunbeds out on the Lido deck, couldn’t understand why 😉 . The second thing we noticed was that the pool was steaming! Clouds of steam billowing off the surface making it look like Dante’s Inferno. Realism set in and we knew that we were really home suitcases have to be packed, bills have to be paid and farewells have to be made. And that was our day today (though we did manage to slip in a wine tasting session this afternoon) and I went to a talk on the Falklands War from a submariner’s perspective, but the rest of the day was spent packing.

So that’s it, the ‘Somebody Stole Wednesday Cruise’ is at an end don’t know about Wednesday but it seems like somebody stole all the days, they’ve whistled past so fast. We have sailed 37,431 nautical miles, of which the longest leg was Southampton to New York 3,156 nm and the shortest was Abu Dhabi to Dubai 80 nm. We’ve sailed at an average speed of 16.74 knots, visited 43 ports in 24 countries, sailed under 6 bridges (one only just – Yokohama) sailed through 3 oceans and 10 seas with the aid of 92 pilots. We have put our clocks back twenty five times. 23 times for one hour and twice for 30 minutes. The hottest temperature was in Abu Dhabi, the coldest was New York and in this blog I’ve written 68,835 words which I hope you have enjoyed. We have loved almost every minute of it, so much so that if they said we were going round for an encore we would go round again, but there’s not much chance of that, so it’s back to reality (and IPA). See you all very soon.