Blue Planet Journey

This is as close to the Whitsunday Islands that we will get.  Our stop at this gateway to the Great Barrier Reef was canceled because the proximity of Cyclone Iris (a category 2 storm) caused the harbormaster to close Shute Harbour to all traffic. Cruises are somewhat fickle, in that things can happen that bring into play the fine print that says something like, "We will sail here and there, unless the captain decides otherwise." Milford Sound, New Zealand . This has happened twice in the past month.  First, our visit to the famous Milford Sound in New Zealand was canceled when, 6 hours out of Melbourne, Australia, on our way to the Sound, a guest suffered a medical emergency that resulted in the Celebrity Solstice  turning around and returning to Melbourne to evacuate the guest.  Captain Zsis Taramas, in consultation with the medical staff and after considering the risks associated with a nighttime medical evacuation by helicopter, decided to retur...

The ocean and sky always appear in a different form, everyday. Over the next 4 months, I will be on 6 cruises in the South Pacific, all on the Celebrity Solstice .  The first one began on January 2 from Sydney Harbour, and as I write this we have left  Airlie Beach , a self proclaimed gateway to the Great Barrier Reef, and are an hour or 2 away from  Cairns .  When Caroline was sailing in Europe last year, I used this website to track her progress traveling   to different destinations.  It works for this cruise as well. I’ve visited Cairns once in the past.  I was giving a presentation at an international conference on fertility control in wildlife management on Great Keppel Island in 1996, and after the conference my goal was to visit Cairns and book a trip deeper into the Great Barrier Reef .  Unfortunately for me, about an hour after the conference ended, and before I left the island, I stepped on a buried and broken plastic sta...