It’s Cruise 🚢 Day.

Good Morning . Our ship is here and this is the view we made a fuss over.

I think it was worth the push to get it!

I watched the sun come up with a cup of tea sitting on the window seat. What a beautiful start to the day except for the rumbling bear snoring coming from Chris. 🤣

Chris: Me snoring ?!?!?!?!?!?!

We are on the ship and already have our room. The boarding process was so easy and streamlined that we just walked straight through. I think it took maybe 30 minutes total. They give you the safety briefing right away so there is no muster. Which for us is such a relief since we have been dreading standing there and having ptsd nervously waiting to leave this time.

The gluttony has commenced! We had a wonderful lunch with dessert which we never do. Off to explore the ship.

Chris: Rhonda refuses to unpack until we leave the dock ! I guess she has a point, it felt errily familiar standing on our balcony looking across the harbour at the opera house. We were so excited four years ago. We are this time too but we find ourselves holding back a bit until we sail. Then we may do tequila shots !!

Rhonda: it's hours later and we did sail! I had no idea how much it meant to me until we started moving and the tears just fell out. I buried my face in Chris ' neck and just cried. The British around us were astonished . But lord it was a happy relief. Then we did do a tequila shot!

We enjoyed sitting aft and watching the scenery and talking to nice people from England. Sue and Trevor were delightful and we toasted as we sailed.

We chose to have an early night tonight. I was up early this morning . So, more tomorrow , love ya.

Chris : We had no idea how we would feel when we actually, really did, sail out of Sydney Harbour. We were fine the two days in Sydney before we sailed and today getting on the boat but as sail time got closer and closer the Covid PTSD ratcheted up more and more. We were sitting at a poolside bar on the back of the ship with some really nice British people when the horn sounded and we started pulling away from the dock. We had told the story of our 2020 trip to people around us and they were all pretty amazed. As we slowly pulled away from the pier and turned east to sail out of the Harbour Rhonda and I toasted with our new friends and did our tequila shots. We are doing it, we are really doing it this time she said. She hugged me and just started crying. In a way I guess it was her way of finally letting go of the Covid trauma, the worry about our kids, our grandson, each other, our jobs, the world. The people around us that we had told our 2020 story to were so sweet and happy for us. It was really a magical moment, now if we just don't hit an iceberg in the middle of the night tonight.