2026 August 18; At sea sailing towards Southampton, England.

An Electronic chart overview of our whole voyage. These screen shots come from the Navigation channel which has kept me up to date the whole cruise, Although not as good as the real thing, it is good enough to get a good overview.

Today is our 2nd sea day. We have now left the Norwegian Sea behind and have entered the North Sea. By 08.30  the ship joined the Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS) off the port of Hull and we will remain sailing in these “highways” at sea until we arrive at the Southampton Pilot Station. Even when sailing through the Straits of Dover, we will be in the Traffic separation zones.  The English channel was one of the first area’s where a TSS was implemented as it is one of the busiest channels in the world. It is and also one of the most chaotic ones, as apart from the North – South  traffic and vice versa, there is also the cross channel traffic, the fishermen and a lot of coastal traffic that stays away from the TSS, but can still come very close.

Entering the TSS on the English side near  Hull.

When looking at the more detailed chart, it looks like it has contracted a bout of measles. The purple lines are Traffic  Separation Schemes, with one on the English side (dark purple). then one in the middle which is especially for the deep drafted tankers,  some of them with a draft so deep that they would run aground if sailing in one of the others. And then there is the 3rd one, which follows the Dutch Coast and is primarily meant to keep the traffic to the Dutch, German and Baltic ports away from the rest of the North Sea.  The blue dimples are depth marks , with water depths less than the standard chart reference which is normally 10 meters.  Most of the time these bumps are wrecks of ships, airplanes  and materials dumped during a long forgotten past. It is not advised to drop the anchor here as it might hit something and blow itself up. Or when retrieving an anchor having a complete 2nd world war lorry hanging on one of the flukes. (That happened to me once, when I was ordered to anchor off the Thames pilot station). Then the sea bed is full of purple wriggly lines, which are communication cables, anchor chains from oil rigs and pipe lines often inter connected between oil wells, still in use, but where the oil rig above water has already been removed.

This 3rd screen shot is what the navigator will have on his screen. Here we see the Aurora approaching the TSS with the intention to join. The Rules say, that when you are going to join a TSS, you should approach it under the smallest possible angle. So that other ships are not confused about your intentions and the Rules of the Road are simple to apply. When crossing, it should be done under a 90o angle or as close as possible to it.

The routes of the TSS, and there where the TSS turns direction are normally marked by a buoy. All ships now have Electronic Charts which come up on the radar screen, so the radar picture (that picks up most of the traffic) shows these buoys on the screen but a secondary confirmation of your position, by looking out of the window is always handy. Last week one of the Saga cruise ships reported that Russia had disturbed their GPS satellite signal so much that they could not enter their scheduled port and had to go to another one. Most ships do not have plan alternative B anymore = paper charts= and rely on a plan B which consists out of an Electronic back up with independent power of the same equipment. When you have such an electronic back up system, paper charts are not required anymore. That is fine during a black out , but not when Putin starts playing around.  If there is an (up-to-date) paper chart on board, then you could resurrect old time navigation again by looking out of the window and taking bearings of land marks and even buoys if necessary.  During the Koeweiti war when Allied forces removed Saddam from power, the President of the United States almost decided to stop the GPS system (which is a USA system) as the Iraqi tanks all had GPS as well for their desert navigation. However when it was realised that the Allied Forces would have been up the creek as well, using the same system, the plan was abandoned.   The Russians have their own GLONASS system and Europe is working on their own Galilei system. All to bring redundancy and to stop one world power from flipping the Big Black Switch.

I did not need GPS to find meyway around the ship today but it would be nice to have a gadget to help with packing. Apart from 4 bottles of Gin (savings, over £100,–) we have not bought very much but for some reason it is always harder to get the clothes back into the suitcase, than you put them in at home. I wonder if there is somewhere a professor out there who has a developed after much testing (packing suitcases) a convincing theory for this.  Without GPS we walked the ship as it is always interesting to see what the guests get up to on the last day. The pub “champions” was well filled with lonely men, most likely turfed out of the cabin by the good wives who were packing.  The Curzon theatre was full for the two lectures, one about the big freeze of 1947 and one about how Viking and Nautical Words have seeped into the English Language.  Most interesting was the shops, who were doing a roaring trade. Since the invention of “On Board Credit”, the shops in general have seen an upswing in sales on the last sea day, compared to the times before.

The Sindhu lunch menu. We found it money well spent.

We had booked lunch in the Sindhu, the Indian restaurant which is also the breakfast place for the suites. We had done a dinner years and years ago on the ms Arcadia of P&O. We had looked at the menu and it did not seemed to have changed very much. But as we were still interested we decided to go for lunch. That costs £ 11.90 a person and brings three courses.  They serve Kingfisher beer, the 650 cc Premium version, so I was directly in heaven.

The ms Arcadia is the 5th. Vista class ship that was pushed over when building, by Carnival from the “Holland America Brand” to the “P&O Brand”. At the ship yard the hull was much modified and then Holland America incorporated those changes in the ms Eurodam and ms Nieuw Amsterdam, being the Signature Class.

Traditional Goan Beef Vindaloo dish. Simple in setup but extremely tasty.

The space of serving, although the food still comes very fast out of the kitchen, is somewhat slower than in the dining rooms and also the waiters have the time for a little chat.  The taste was excellent but they had tuned down the “heat” somewhat as there will be many guests visiting who are not familiar with the dishes. The average British person is very familiar with ordering an Indian Take-away, but the restaurants have little “red pepper” markings next to the the dish, but otherwise they tend to play it safe. so my “Beef Vindaloo” was not as hot as I was expecting it to be, but if the spices are right, it will taste very good, and indeed it did.

And then there was the rest of the afternoon, my struggling to get 3 suitcases packed with aim of getting them packed in the same way as they came to the ship. Should make it easier to get everything back in the correct ward robe when we get home.   We received our “landing papers” and that gave some confusion again as it did not state that we could have Breakfast in our suite restaurant, the Sindhu, only that we could wait there 30 minutes before disembarking (08.10). However our butler confirmed that breakfast would be served. Why not just list all the venues? At 5 pm. the Cruise Director came into the cabin via the P.A over ride to explain the disembarkation process and also forgot to mention that the Lido was open for Breakfast and not only the dining room.

Accumulated pop-up cards in the cabin. It took me two days to realize what was different to this cabin compared to others. It was the number of pop- up notification cards everywhere. No fixed signs, no stickers.  Bathrobes for use, hours forward / back. Flushing the toilet. Don’t take the Bose speaker home and also not the Handwash bottle in the toilet. We later also go a hard copy bill statement, instead on an electronic copy mailed to our Email account,

On other company’s many of these cards have been replaced by fixed signs so the amount of paper used is reduced. P&O, at least on the Aurora has not gotten there yet. Also as the T.V system is very antiquated.  (There is no TV movie library either only 2 streaming channels with movies, but they are not in synch with the TV program and they often do not run on time)  BUT: the captain announced that P&O will start investing in the Aurora so it will be ready for the next 10 years. And that is good news. This is a very nice ship, and excellent for longer cruises. so an update of the T.V system, a spruce up of the public areas (I hope they do not decide on a complete revamp, as that takes some of the ambiance of the public rooms away) would all do the ship very good.

And finally now I have to reveal the real reason  why we are on board.

• We were asked by Gemma, Lesley’s Chiropodist to take a cruise on the ms Aurora to meet her favourite Cruise Director who had promised her an Aurora-teddy bear.  How could we refuse, any excuse to make a cruise, is a good excuse. Hello Gemma, we have the bear , we are going home tomorrow and you will your teddy bear at your next appointment.

Gemma’s Teddy Bear.

After final cocktails in the Crowsnest and dinner in the dining room it was also time to go to and see the final show. Another performance by the ships cast, the Headliners called “Applause”. This time a compilation of the best known and most successful songs from Broadway and West End musicals.

The Headliners in “Applause”.

This was another very good show and they received a standing ovation at the end. This was their most  high powered & fast costume changing show of all, so quite rightly most of the audience stood up. (Some were beyond getting up, due to age) Maybe also partly as there only had been regular applause during the previous shows.  This is cruise number 5 this year and although the cast of the ms Sky Princess was very good as well, this was the best we have seen this year. The number of shows they can do (eight of them) and also the quality and high octane performance of the group was extraordinary. COMPLIMENTS,

Tomorrow morning the ship will at the Southampton pilot station at 03.00 hrs. and should be docked by 05.30. Then self disembark will start at 06.30 followed by us at 08.30 hrs. If all goes well, we should be home around 17.00 hrs. tomorrow.

As is normal routine, then the day after tomorrow my final blog will be posted: Review and Verdict with the total overview of the cruise.

Weather for tomorrow: Overcast with 22oC, so it should be good driving weather.

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