Around the World In 120 Days: A Journey of Discovery

By Robert S. Gennings

An exciting story of discovery and learning whilst circling the globe aboard the Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth. The author describes daily life aboard ship; the abundance of entertainment and sporting activities, medical emergencies and the restrictions when traveling in pirate waters. The reader is transported vicariously though twenty-four countries and thirty-eight ports of call; their histories and geographies are reviewed and the author’s fascination with their cultural treasures is described.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Nov 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483419695

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We Meet the Queen Elizabeth

Our flight from Greenville to Fort Lauderdale via Charlotte concluded with nary a problem. We did pause to consider what our options would be if any of our bags failed to arrive on time – the logistics of coordinating the redelivery of our baggage to the ship somewhere further along in the voyage would be a little complex, to put it mildly. But no worries – Joan’s two huge suitcases and my little one all arrived on schedule!

After spending a pleasant overnight in Fort Lauderdale we shuttled our way to Port Everglades, the Fort Lauderdale port, and were efficiently processed through the ship’s check-in routine and thence to our cabin.

This Queen Elizabeth is actually the third to bear that Royal name - the first was commissioned in the 1930’s and served as a troop carrier (as did the Queen Mary) during WWII. The second ship built was named the QE2 and it served Cunard until somewhere around the turn of the millennium, when it was sold to one of the countries in the Middle East. The present ship is relatively new, being commissioned in 2010.

I have to say that the earlier ships were more attractive, in my opinion. Back then, they looked like ships should look. The modern ocean-going liner looks a bit like a floating apartment building in silhouette – or as my younger son-in- law said – ‘a bit like a container ship’. The Queen Elizabeth has a pointy end at the front, as expected, but its length seems to continue, somewhat ‘brick’-like, until it is terminated – suddenly - at the stern. It’s as if someone, somehow, decided ok, that’s long enough and at that point promptly chopped off the end. Ok, that may be unfair - if we ignore the image shown in silhouette and study the overall lines of the hull, we might conclude that though the ship is very different from its predecessors, it is, nonetheless, a very attractive vessel.

Regardless of one’s feeling about the exterior of the ship, the interior must be seen to be believed. It is quite magnificent, palatial even, as befits its heritage. Most of us have experienced the cruising life to some extent, so there is no need to describe all the amenities – and you can find that on the Cunard website anyway. Suffice to say that whatever your experience, however you imagine it, this is better than can be described in any brochure. The Italian yard Fincantieri built this superb ship at their Monfalcone yard – neither of the once famous UK yards on Tyneside or Belfast got the contract; actually, I’m not sure if they even still exist.

Now at this point in my story, I will describe some of the technicalities and specifications of the ship. Some of us have a great interest in this stuff….more ‘normal’ people - those disinclined to read ‘techno-speak’ - should skip these next paragraphs!

The keel for the Queen Elizabeth was laid in January 2009 and the vessel was delivered to Cunard in September 2010 - that’s twenty months later. This seems an incredibly short time to build a complex passenger liner 955 feet long with 105 ft. beam and boasting a gross displacement of 90,000 tonnes! But in reality, the build started long before that – the construction was actually fabricated in modular form, with many sections of the hull and superstructure being built simultaneously.

The draft of the ship is only 26 feet. It has a flat bottom design, which I think is less than optimal for an ocean-going liner; it is definitely not a good feature to have in a heavy seaway, as our fellow Southampton-boarding passengers discovered when the ship ran into rough weather on the transatlantic leg of this voyage! But the flat bottom concept allows the designer to pack in more operating machinery and deadweight at a lower level and keep the center of gravity low. This in turn allows more volume and therefore payload to be added to the superstructure and thus more passengers can be carried in a given volume, thereby maximizing the revenue per mile travelled. Interestingly, the air draft is 179 feet, giving an air/water draft ratio of 6.9. That’s pretty high versus more traditional vessels. I doubt the QE will topple over though!

The ship’s propulsion system is diesel-electric. There are a total of 6 generators that together produce 63.4 megawatts; two azimuthing propeller pods each consume 17.5 megawatts with the balance of power supplying the ship’s electrical systems. For transverse movement, the propellers are augmented with two bow thrusters and these eliminated the need for tug assistance on our departure from Fort Lauderdale. Perhaps we will not need tug help at any of our ports of call - it will be interesting to see if this is so…

Underway, the ship cruises at about 18 knots and at that speed it consumes 24 tonnes of fuel per hour. Fuel capacity is 3.5k cubic metres, which I reckon equates to about 4,000 tonnes of fuel oil.

We left Fort Lauderdale Tuesday evening and proceeded down the Florida Strait, past the north coast of Cuba and into the Caribbean Sea. Our first port of call will be Aruba, where we will dock two days from now after sailing about one thousand miles from Fort Lauderdale. We’re running today under partly cloudy skies at 70+ degrees Fahrenheit, enjoying calm seas with waves of 1-2 feet. It doesn’t get much better than this!

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Our Welcome Aboard!

Aruba – Where is That?

We arrived this morning at Oranjestad, the port city of Aruba. This island is part of the Dutch Antilles and along with the Netherlands, Curacao and St Maarten is one of four constituent countries that form the kingdom of the Netherlands. Its economy is totally dependent on the tourist industry, with the majority of visitors coming from the USA, but the Europeans are well represented too, as are the South Americans, of course - Venezuela is due south of this island, its coast being just 15 miles away. The island is small, about 70 square miles in area; the resident population is about 120,000 but during the main tourist season at least one ship per day arrives here. Our ship carries two thousand passengers plus one thousand crew, and the larger ocean liners obviously carry even more – we are all VIPs with great financial potential!

Cunard offers a plethora of day excursions at each of the ports that we visit, and today we chose the Aruba highlights bus tour. It was a good choice; the trip around this nineteen-mile long island took about 3 hours. There’s not a great deal to see, actually, but our driver proved to be quite a comedian and imparted his knowledge of Aruba with a great sense of humour. Some of the factoids of interest include the education system – it’s to 12th grade only, continuing - for those fortunate to be awarded one - with a 5-year state scholarship in Holland! Almost all Arubans are taught - and speak - four languages: Papiamento, the primary language plus Dutch, English and Spanish.

Until about 10 years ago, an Esso refinery existed here but it was later acquired by Valero and has since been closed down. There’s just one hospital, but as our witty driver said no one gets sick here, they live healthy lives until one day they just drop dead.

It’s late in the afternoon now and the ship is leaving the dock, bound for our next stop in Puerto Limon, Costa Rica, where we are scheduled to arrive on Sunday morning. In fact, I see that it’s 5pm already, so we will now enjoy a glass of cabernet sauvignon on our balcony and watch the ship’s departure process. It’s 82 degrees Fahrenheit here and we’re glad not to be in the northeast of the USA where it’s raining, snowing, freezing cold or all of the above!!

Lemons in Limon – Bananas, too

We have two days at sea now before reaching our first port in Costa Rica. There is a time change of -1 hour today. Yesterday, we added an hour to synchronize with Aruba time so now we’re back at GMT-5 again.

We’ve been quite good about exercising, in an effort not to add too many pounds since we will be on this ship for another 100 days or so. Without paying strict attention, we could stagger off the ship in Southampton, our final destination, needing immediate gastric bypass surgery! There’s no excuse really. The ship’s fitness room has a multitude of the very latest gym equipment including stair steppers, bikes, treadmills and all kinds of weight lifting machinery. And there are several fitness classes every day, ranging from Pilates and yoga to Fab Abs. There’s even a foil fencing class, which I might try at some point. The fitness room almost spans the breadth of the ship and is located in the most forward part of the superstructure on deck 9. It yields a view immediately forward of the ship for as far as it’s possible to see, perhaps 15 miles on a clear day! So far we’ve been working out on the treadmills, although I never have been much of a treadmill fan – I always feel a bit like a hamster on his miniature wheel - except that he has the sense to stop when he feels he’s done enough. We humans often set goals that require us to exert ourselves beyond all reasonable measure. Maybe the hamster is smarter…

Tonight is another formal night and in addition, we have yet another Captain’s reception for those of us who are World Travellers (there are quite a few of us). There will be many formal receptions and formal dinners on this voyage. The good thing about formal evenings is that it helps us enjoy the informal ones so much more! Last night we had the Robbie Burns Ball, mostly jigs and reels that we have no idea how to do. The highlight of a Robbie Burns evening is the address to the Haggis. Several years ago I had the privilege of seeing this performed by a Shakespearean actor dressed in magnificent Scottish tartan and complete with kilt and dirk– a man of great height and girth, with a voice as impressive as that of Bryn Terfel. I remember it to this day. Typically, the ceremony begins with the traditional bagpipe introduction and eventually culminates with the Ode to the Haggis. The Ode is delivered with courteousness and great aplomb and culminates with a mighty thrust of the dirk into the haggis. At this point everyone cheers and drinks to the health of the haggis (which is already long since deceased). Unfortunately the performance on this occasion wasn’t as good. The ship’s chief engineer, a Scotsman, played the part and I will simply say that his effort contrasted significantly with my earlier experience. But I’m sure he did his best.

We arrived early on Sunday morning at the port of Limon, Costa Rica. The Celebrity Equinox arrived at exactly the same time. We docked at the passenger ship terminal, whilst the Equinox docked at the container terminal, and appropriately so, for it ‘contained’ fifty percent more passengers than our ship!

We had a tour booked, which we felt would give us a good overview of Limon, travelling by bus, canal boat and train. As we passed through the town center, it was clear that this would not be a place to return to at night. Razor fencing and barbed wire surrounded most properties and the squalor and poverty here were distressingly apparent. Further out from the city are the banana plantations, where most of the residents of this part of Costa Rica are employed, though as in Aruba, tourism is the country’s major industry. The canal part of our journey took us through mangrove swamps where we saw a great variety of birds, bats and iguana. From the canal we boarded a 1950’s era narrow gauge train which stopped occasionally for us to observe and photograph more wildlife, most notably a family of howler monkeys. The rickety old train click-clacked us noisily through extensive banana plantations farmed by locals under contract to large corporations such as Del Monte, (the country’s largest banana buyer) and Dole (the Worlds largest supplier). These contracts are generally for 10 years and sometimes are not renewed; when this happens, it creates considerable economic havoc in an area where there’s little alternative employment available.

And I almost forgot - today is Australia day! Two of our table mates are from there; we enjoy having dinner with them each night, and tonight we all went to the Aussie night party in the Golden Lion pub where we had a great time with the resident comedian/piano player who entertained us with a variety of Australian jokes and sing-alongs. This was a great ending to a very good day.

Tomorrow, we transit the Panama Canal. I’ve been looking forward to that with great excitement!

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Bananas in their ‘infancy’

The Panama Canal

Today, we transited the Panama Canal. Many books have been written on the history and building of this canal, which could, arguably, be added to the ‘new’ Seven Wonders of the World. I recently read David McCullough’s The Path Between the Seas, which provides an absolutely fascinating story of this incredible engineering project. The global politics involved are very complex and this adds to the allure of this man-made seaway; in fact there are many passengers who are on this segment of the voyage simply for the experience of transiting the canal, and it is one not to be missed.

Travelling overnight from Limon, we picked up our Pilot at 6:30 am just before the entrance jetty at Colon, the first point of interest on this route. Many of us were up at that time to observe the entry into the 3 stage Gatun locks, which would raise the ship to Gatun Lake, 85 feet above sea level. The locking process itself is simple; no pumps are used, water flows by gravity in a controlled sequence from lake to sea via the three locks. Each ship proceeds under its own power from basin to basin, assisted by powerful locomotives or ‘mules’ which maintain the vessel on the longitudinal centerline of the lock by means of heavy cables attached to bollards within the hull of the ship. But even with the mules, the larger ships tend to bounce off the lock sides from time to time, as our Queen Elizabeth did. (I would be mortified if our own Mainship Pilot boat contacted the sides of the lock that we regularly transit on the Intercoastal Waterway!) The Queen Elizabeth just fits into each of the three 1,000 ft. long by 110 ft. lock basins, but there’s not much room with her length and beam at 955 feet and 105 feet respectively - just 45 feet clearance at the ends and a scant two and a half feet on either side!

Transiting the isthmus saves about 20 days at sea – an enormous saving in time and cost - but it’s been estimated that the canal will reach capacity in 2015 (it was originally expected to be in 2013, but the recession reduced tonnage through the canal quite significantly). A very ambitious project was begun in 2007 to add a third lane to the Gatun (Atlantic) and Miraflores (Pacific) locks. Not only will