Wednesday, February 12, 2020

February 12th - At Anchor in the Malacca Strait


About 3AM this morning we left our berth in Port Kelang and proceeded down river to the Malacca Strait where we sat at anchor waiting for the fuel boat to meet us. 


The boat was coming from Singapore and arrived sometime between 10-11 AM this morning.  The fueling process will take all day and hopefully we’ll be on our way towards Fremantle later this evening.  Several of the ship’s staff said that this is the first time they’ve ever seen a cruise ship being fueled while at sea.  This was the view outside of the deck 2 game room this afternoon.  You can see the guys sitting there monitoring the delivery.  Fred and I played a game of scrabble as we watched the ship. (I won)


It’s hot and humid as we stand still here in the strait.  Around us are dozens of other ships at anchor.  The Captain told us some were waiting on berths while others were waiting on orders from their owners.  The owners will direct them to the port willing to pay the best price for whatever they have on board.  That was interesting, I didn’t know ships did that.

On my way to get pictures of the fueling ship, I stopped and got a photo of our hallway on deck 5 of the QMII.  That’s our room to the right…and we’re in the middle of the ship so that gives you an idea of the length of this particular liner.  Although the QM2 is bigger in tonnage and length then a lot of other ships, it doesn’t hold as many people.  It was purpose built to cross the Atlantic and is in fact the only ship that can be called an ‘ocean liner’ currently in use.  It does a great job in rough seas as we saw during the transatlantic crossing when we were in the middle of that blizzard.  Boy does that seem like a long time ago!


Well hopefully our next few days at sea will be uneventful for a change.  We are scheduled to be in Fremantle Australia on the 18th and will stay there overnight.  We’re looking forward to being off the ship!  We plan to take the train into Perth the first day and have a look around, it’ll be good to be on solid ground again.

No comments:

Post a Comment