It is 2:30 AM and we are leaving for the Airport Shuttle.  I'll post again as soon as we are in Rome.  This is the hard part!  The Wagners

The Big Cruise

We are leaving on Nov 19th for Rome!  We begin our 32 day cruise on that day very early in the morning.  Our air port shuttle leaves at 3:30AM for a &:15 flight out of SeaTac.  We will fly to New York, then London, and then into Rome at !0:20AM, on Nov 20.  From there we will take a bus to the port of Civitavecchia, 90 minutes away.  Then, I collapse onto a bed for a much needed rest.

 We are sailing on the Crown Princess: Year Built: 2006 Last Refurbished: 2011 Gross Tonnage: 113,000 tons Passenger Capacity: 3,080 Crew Size: 1,142.Crown Princess is a Grand Class ship owned and operated by Princess Cruises. Her maiden voyage took place on June 14, 2006

Our cruise begins in Rome and then our list of ports includes: Naples(Pompeii), Santorini, Greece, Kusadasi, Turkey(Ephesus),Mykonos, Athens, Olympia,  Dubrovnik, Croatia, Venice, Rome, Florence, Canne, France, Barcelona, Spain, Lisbon, Portugal and the Azores.  Then we have 6 days at sea before we reach Ft Lauderdale and then finally to Galveston.  There are a few sea days here and there to give us a rest between ports.  As you can see, this is a real Bucket List.  I plan to post at least every other day, I hope more often, but it depends on availability of internet access.

The Crown Princess is 951 ft (290 m) long, and our cabin is the second cabin from the front on Deck C.  All the dining rooms are far aft.  If I work this right, I can include my daily walks as I go to meals!! 

Roche Harbor and Beyond

We are on a week long cruise, staying in Roche Hbr for two days and leaving for Echo Bay at noon today. We re cruising with Mike and Janice Connell on their Irish Ayes, a Catalina 27 and Alan Parks on his Tartan 30, Misty Isle. Mike is a great fisherman so we ate dungeness crab two nights in a row and last night we ate on the deck at the restaurant with a beautiful sunset and a full moon at night. Tomorrow  we meet up with Anita and Ed Johnson on Jester for a few days on Orcas Island, at Rosario Resort.
The Desolation Sound cruise was a success but they did not go at far.They had bad seas so decided to visit the Gulf Islands so went to Ladysmith and Montague and Maple  Bay before heading back via Roche and other US ports. They were gone about two weeks and loved the boy time. We will return home on Labor Day for a few weeks recoup before I set off for Ashland and plays with my friend Debbie Miller.  Jim plans a trip to the Wooden Boat Festival in PT Townsend the week before I go so you can see we are busy, busy.
This year we will have lots of cruise time.  We leave for 32 days in November and then Jim sets off for the Galapagos in February and then we go to Hawaii for a two week cruise in April. We will be sailing on Princess for the first time. Hope we like it.
Our friends Janet and Dee left for their five hundred mile walk across Spain and we got our first spot notification   That was very exciting! Buen suerte, ladies!

One Year Later-Almost

Happy 4th of July! 
We are recovered from boat emergencies, body ailments and a long winter.  Jim leaves July 11 for a trip to Desolation Sound on Mark Casteel's boat, Rosie, along with Alan Parks and Jimmy Ragland on his boat SnowGoose.  This will be a first for Jim, traveling in a power boat/trawler into Canadian waters.  I have planned meals and packed lots of canned/fast food to help them get through their weeks at sea.  They will stop in Nanaimo or Comox for provisions before they head into the isolated anchorages of Desolation Sound so they probably won't starve to death, but I want to do my bit.  Even included some chocolate mini candy bars for late night sweet attacks!  Hope the weather is good and the seas mild.

32 Days At Sea
I have reactivated this blog so I can get people ready for our next long cruise. We had to abort our New England cruise last fall because I was ill, but this year I am ready to go and we found a real deal on Princess cruises on board the Crown Princess.  We leave Rome on Nov 20 for a cruise through the Mediterranean, stopping in Naples, side trips to Florence, Pisa, Pompei, Cannes, Athen, Mykonos, Santorini, Ephesus in Turkey, Barcelona, and then to Ft Lauderdale and finally Galveston on Dec 22.  We will be on the ship for 32 days!!  I plan to blog down to this trip so friends and family can get ready with us and share the trip as we go along.
The first thing we've discovered is the credit card we wanted to use expires the same month as the trip starts, so we had to order a new one early to allow purchase of side trips and other purchases on board.  Also, we discovered Jim's passport expires less than six months after we return home so the cruise line will not accept his passport number.  That brought the online cruise planning to a stop until we get those renewals completed.  While I wait for those to arrive, I am researching the ports of call and sightseeing opportunities.  Also, I am reading all suggestions for packing for long cruises.  I still need to find out if Princess has a special price to cover  all laundry like Holland America does. We plan to pack enough clothes for 10 days and send things out on the 7th day with a 2 day turn around.  Of course, we could go to the laundry, but with a huge boat, I bet there will be a waiting line.  Also, I don't want to do laundry.  Maybe if we were on a 112 day cruise I would consider it.  We'll see.  More later. 

Not Such A Long Trip

On Friday August 5, we left the dock for a week cruising in the San Juans. Soon we found out the depth sounder did not work, so our new electronics were not doing well. We motored out to Red 2 and decided we could go to Coronet Bay and stay there for the night. We were desperate to get out on the boat! After 30 minutes, the depth sounder switched on. We discussed it, coming up with lots of reasons why it wouldn't work. Motored half way to Coronet Bay, and Jim couldn't get the AIS to work properly. We don't have big tankers on this side of the island, but he would keep messing with it. The depth sounder went off. We think that was because Jim pushed the reset button. Tied up to the float at Coronet Bay with two big sailboats and a tug. I settled into the cockpit with a book, loving it. We figured we would see if the thing worked the next day and then plan to go out under the bridge. That afternoon we watched two big power boats on the other float set up their crab cooking pots with outside cooking rings w/ propane tanks. They really had it down to a science, and they were catching the crabs right off the float!! Saturday morning we turned on the motor and electronics and no luck. We decided we had started the electronics before the motor and the surge in power caused things to reboot, so we waited till the afternoon. Then when we ran the engine, we discovered we had lots of eel grass clogging up the strainer. Picked and blew that out OK. Had another good night at the float. On Sunday morning, we started things up and WOW!@ the depth sounder came right on. I was spooked by then, so we motored back to Penn Cove to be on the hook for a night. It was fun watching the Cutty Sark go in and out and other boats anchoring around us. The next morning we were going south, but again the depth sounder didn't work, so we gave up and went home. We cut our trip short by three days, but we need to get this fixed for our next trip on Aug 23 when we plan to go south with the WINSA group. This is boring, but that's what happens when things don't work on a boat. The good thing is I still liked it! And, I stayed on my diet the whole time. Also, we bought a new dinghy with an aluminum bottom and getting in and out from the boat was easy. All good things. Yesterday I noticed we took the boat to Anacortes on April 25, my birthday, and we got it back on Jul 21. That's the summer, folks!! The Whidbey Wagners

Finally Going To Sea

Well, a long time has lapsed since our last trip out on the Karen Marie. In May we had the boat hauled out to paint the bottom and many, many problems later, we finally had her back in the water on July 21. The keel had been damaged ( we think it was before we bought the boat) and then further irritated by Jim's slip into the mud at the Swinomish Channel. The keel was hanging and damaged on the leading edge. This meant the mast was removed, keel was removed, repairs were done to the bottom, keel and reattachment. We also had a new chart plotter added, causing more problems. Anyway, we finally have the boat back and we are going out for a week, leaving tomorrow. More later as we travel about, including photos. Jim and Virginia

Going to St Maarten

We are cruising along in the Atlantic after our aborted attemopt to go to our first stop, Half Moon Cay, in the Bahamas. The Captain said, "No, Go." , so we set out for our next stop, but a day early. They have reservations so I guess they found someplace new for us. We have an un planned stop in St Maarten. I need to look it up, but the literature says the island is under two flags. We arrive there tomorrow around noon.
Yesterday Jim had an acupuncture treatment on his knee, and now he's doing TaiChi exercises and sitting in the hot tub. I think it's all part of the original injury from last year. We both got in the hot tub yesterday, and we have had sun so far. Today it is cloudy, but we don't care. We had a great dinner last night and got all dressed up. Tonight we are doing the same thing.
More later. Virginia