Day 02 - 09/17/26 - Scenic Cruising - Day 1

 Little did we know that today was going to be a whale of a day. We woke up via an alarm at 7:15 AM as the first event was to start at 9 AM. We enjoyed our first breakfast in the Lido and I especially appreciated the fresh cooked eggs and the accompanying sausage and bacon and salmon. We then hustled down to the World Stage where Theresa our cruise Director did a brief interview of three of her staff, Holly (Travel Guide), Jaclyn (Wildlife expert), and Ben (Shore Excursions Manager).  Then at 9:15 Jacqueline gave a talk on when and where is my wildlife that was pretty interesting. She was followed by Ben who gave a first presentation on shore excursions.  

I then led a Cruise Critic meet and greet in the Wang Theatre. There were about 50 people in attendance. I was a little apprehensive about the venue because the seating is fixed theater style and not in tables, but it really worked out to be very profitable to have the people seated that way, I gave a short introduction and then answered questions and we had a group conversation about the cruise and very aspects of it. The feedback I received was very positive and I really liked how it went.

A quick Lido lunch followed, and we were then back in the World Stage for a Port Talk by Holly on Sitka, the Hubbard glacier and Valdez. We followed this with a wine tasting in the main dining room. We both rather enjoyed the Mosel River Valley white wine. It turned out that three of the people at our table were from Bellingham, Washington and were very familiar with a company I used to work for up there. Also one fellow had built a 42 foot Chinese junk that he sailed from Anchorage to Seattle, where he then attended college while living on the boat. His wife, it turned out, was born in Anchorage like I was.

At 3 o'clock, Dr. Michael Douglas gave a presentation on making the most of your Alaskan cruise. He was an excellent speaker and I'm looking forward to his further enrichment talks. Afterwards we ventured out onto deck three and watched a number of whale sightings. I checked out the bow area, which was quite windy and I was dressed only in a T-shirt and shorts. My phone battery was getting low so I headed back to the room to obtain my large camera and backup battery for the phone.  When we returned to deck three on the port side, the whales were still breaching and all totaled think we saw nearly a dozen, which is the most that we've seen on any cruise on any given day. This added to the whales Angela saw before and during breakfast really made our day. I also saw a few dolphins off the starboard side bow when I was up there. We're looking forward to more scenic, cruising tomorrow and hope to see more whales. our general route took us cruising up by Princess Royal Island, and the Grenville Channel and by the great Bear Rainforest. Some of the channels were probably less than half a mile wide, which was pretty impressive to sail through. The weather today started out foggy, but once we cleared the fog, it was blue skies for the rest of the day. But as I noted earlier out on the bow, it was quite windy, sailing up the narrow channel.

Tonight was dressy night, but we didn't elaborately dress up. We did eat our customary dinner in the Lido and watch the scenery go by while eating dinner. The Captain's toast was tonight at 7:15 PM and Captain  Michiel Williams gave a welcome and introduced a few of his senior officers. Theresa, our cruise director, then introduced the cast show which was hits on 45 about songs from the 50s, 60s, and 70s.  We ended our evening by watching the movie Race to Alaska in the Wajang Theatre. It's a documentary about racing Ngoan motorized boats from Port Townsend, Washington to Ketchikan, Alaska.  Their route followed much the same route that we are following and it was a very engaging story and I highly recommend it. And as a teaser, not all the boats were sail powered.

Returning to the room, we found that we had chocolate and a bear towel  animal on our bed as it was dressy night. Tonight we adjust our clock one hour back to be on Alaska time for the remainder of our voyage until we get back to Vancouver. We're looking forward to another day of scenic cruising on Friday and it should be good. We're trying to be optimistic.



Theresa. Cruise Director



Officer List


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