Western Canadian Rockies (WCR) – Day 13 – Setting Sail

 

Today is Saturday June 22 (regardless of the posting date indicated above the post title) and we are setting sail on our Alaskan Cruise portion of our trip.  The ship doesn’t leave the dock until 5:00 pm, but Carmen and I decide to leave the hotel around 11:00am figuring it will take at least an hour and a half to get through security and customs then check into the ship, etc.  Yes, we are entering the USA even though we are in Vancouver, Canada since all of our ports are in the USA, so we go through customs.  Here is Carmen up on the top deck of the Zuiderdam, the ship we are on, with Canada Place in the back.

 

While walking around the decks and figuring what we wanted to eat for lunch, I noticed the ship berthed next to the sea plane terminal.

Planes were coming and going about every 3 minutes; this one just landed and from here, looked like a very smooth landing.

Here is Canada Place again, with its sails or mountains, you figure out which, and the edge of our ship on which we will soon sail.  You can see all of the people on the deck by the building.  Speaking of the deck, the colored lines from the building to the edge of the deck is a Canadian Province while the smaller colored blocks is the name of a city or town.  Each of the Canadian Provinces has a place on the Canadian Place deck.

Speaking of sailing, at 4:00pm on the dot, we begin our muster drill to our designated life boats.  We did not have to put on the life vests for the drill as the life vest ties are long and probably too many people tripped over them.  As usual, there are always people who think the drill does not include them so we must wait until they finally show up.  Later I get a picture of the life boats. 

As we leave the dock, we see Vancouver in the background and the Diamond Princess ship also preparing to leave.

As we head out of the port and through the channel that will take us to the north passage through the island, I see Grouse Mountain, that we were at yesterday is now clear of clouds and appears to have great views.  Now this is an extreme zoom and also an enlarged cropping, but you can see the gondola going up the mountain climbing to 3800 ft (all in about 8 minutes).  You can also see the Eye of the Wind – a 36 person view pod rising to the top of the 125 ft blade windmill.  Go figure, one day difference from our foggy experience.

 

We pass under Lions Gate Bridge which we went over yesterday to get to Grouse Mountain and then Lighthouse Point Park which we did not have time to go and see.  We sail north along the coast passing the same route we took on the ferry from Victoria on our way to Whistler. 

We end our day, well not quite, but our picture taking day, with this view from the lounge at the bow of the ship.  Sun going down (in another couple of hours or so) reflects off of the sea, fair winds and a hope for good weather for the remainder of the cruise. 

Later that evening, we had clear skies for the full moon, when the moon is at its closet.  Quite a sight as the moon is at its biggest, for our viewing pleasure.  Nice!

We have been on the water since 5:00pm and the sun went below the horizon late; tomorrow is a full day at sea, bye for now, Bob and Carmen.