Saturday morning, the day of boarding ... disaster. One of the friends I was going to travel with came down with a dose of 'it'. Completely asymptomatic, they told me, so he and his wife were out. Devastated as you can imagine and I felt so sorry for them both. They used our TA's emergency number to let them know, so they could contact Ponant. We hadn't yet met up, so fortunately I was fine wrt my health paper-work; I wouldn't have been a 'close contact', but I don't think Ponant would have used that definition.
So I made my way to the Darwin Cruise Terminal by myself. I was wondering about how early I should arrive - we were told we'd board by decks and my deck 4 was at 4:15. I arrived at 3:45 and it turned out I was about the 6th last group!
First, sitting in the terminal waiting for check of health paperwork:
Then beyond that came examination of vax certificate and the ship's doctor noted down dates and dose type; then a collection of passports for the duration and then a short wait for a steward to escort me to my cabin (or stateroom, as we cruisers like to say
). All very smooth once past the initial wait. As it happened, I boarded at 4:20pm.
My room was on deck 4 (decks 3-6 are the accommodation), a mid-range type of room, with balcony. Some on deck 3 didn't have balconies.
All very nice and comfortable.
Not long after, the mandatory lifejacket/evacuation drill:
I then repaied to one of the lounges. I spied Veuve Clicquot on the bar, so asked for a glass and was then introduced to the 'premium drinks package' of E20/day- which was news to me, but jolly good - I had a E200 credit courtesy of my TA and Virtuoso so that was quickly dealt with. A better quality of booze and from what I could tell, worth it, especially as it wasn't costing me anything.
This was the upstairs bar - in the main bar there's a container with 2-3 magnums and also the 'non premium' stuff (sniffs).
We set sail at 4:30 precisely (I learned that this mob keep very much to schedule) and a nice sunset: