Sea Day 7

The captain was right and we have had some rough sailing. It is evidently a leftover tropical low from an undeveloped cyclone. At least it is not a cyclone. In any event, this is not the Indian Ocean that we have so loved in the past. So, it has been a gray and rainy day with a rough ride. But, they didn't rope shut the deck 5 doors today.

We had to get an early start because the entire ship had to clear Australian immigration this morning. We were at breakfast a bit after 8am at GDR to stay low. We were called to Sirena Lounge around 9am. We walked right through. I am not sure why Broome immigration agents had to come onboard in Bali when we didn't do this for Darwin from PNG. Who knows? Anyway, I found an Indonesian stamp in my passport while I held it! Julie, the CD, made a surprised sounding announcement that the Australian's had decided to hold our passports for additional scanning and they would announce when they would be returned when they got them back. I guess she had thought we would get them and keep them this time since we won't be back out of Australia before the end of the cruise. It didn't seem weird to us until she kept announcing it.

We had lunch in GDR since it was still so rough. There must have been problems in the kitchen. There was a pretty big staff turnover in Bali. Our waiters were new, but the kitchen and dish delivery seemed to be the problem. Glasses not refilled were server problems. Hopefully things will return to the flawless level we had experienced previously.

We got our Oceania Club Bronze Level pins on the bed last night for the 5:45pm management reception for half of us repeat cruisers tonight. It was a full Sirena Lounge. There are a lot of people on here who have cruised O over a 1000 nights. It must be like a full time job.

We had our 2nd reservation at Red Ginger at 6:30pm tonight. That meant that we finally had to go to deck 10 when I'd stayed at 7 or lower all day. It wasn't too bad or else I've just gotten used to it. Looking at the weather satellite forecasts and imagery it looks like it might be rough sailing and bad weather for the entire west coast sailing. That will be sad. Fingers crossed that the system continues to weaken and it moves overland fast.

Tomorrow we are expected to dock at 9am. The ship should already be cleared. We have a Broome Trike Tour scheduled for 10am tomorrow. The rest of the day is at leisure for self wandering. O says they will run a complimentary shuttle about every 45 minutes for the 30 minute commute between the cruise port and Chinatown of Broome. It is supposed to rain tomorrow and be hot. We'll be wet one way or another. So, we'll decide later whether to have the tour end at the pier or in town to take a shuttle back later. We'll see.

I don't think Clay has any photos today.