Day 02 - 08/Jan/24 - At sea to Chacabuco, Chile - Day 1

 After a quiet night moored at San Antonio, I woke up at 6am to find us still moored.  I did note that the Container ship Volga which was moored behind us was being backed out into the turning basin.  A little after 7am, I began to feel movement and turned on the bow camera to watch us back out of our berth and we were accompanied by two tugboats.  I found this departure delay from the 4am time the Captain announced yesterday to be a bit strange.  Perhaps he'll share more in his 11am Main Stage presentation.

We eventually got up and had breakfast before attending the first coffee chat at 9am with Eduardo, our Cruise & Travel Director.  He gave a bit of his background and entertained questions.  At 10, the shore excursions manager gave a presentation on the upcoming ports of call.  I left the presentation midway through to attend the Cruise Critic meet and greet in the Crows Nest.  It was well attended with at least 75 people and I met folks from Oregon and Ottawa at the table I shared. When I came back, Angela had found a HAL shore excursion in Chacabuco that we booked.

At 11am Captain Kevin Baernaert took the stage and started his presentation with a little story about himself.  He was a second officer flying home from his assignment and after boarding the airplane they taxied out and then stopped.  And then they waited and waited for quite some time before taking off.  Throughout all of that, the pilot gave no explanation which made him very uncomfortable.  It turned out that there was a ground hold because Air Force One was in the area.  He made a vow at that point that if he were ever a captain and there was an event creating uncertainty for his guests, he would attempt to be proactive in keeping the guests informed.  And that was why he took the stage replacing the port talk that was scheduled.

Captain Kevin

He then proceeded to explain in detail with copies of port emails & screen shots of weather radar at various time points, and other documents why we had to remain berthed overnight and why we were missing Puerto Montt.  At this port, if the winds are greater than 15 knots and the swell is over 1.5 meters (4 feet), the port is closed because it is unsafe for the tugboats to operate and the Port requires two tugs to assist every vessel.  Additionally, the cargo ships get priority which explained why the Volga left before us. And beyond all of the preceeding, there were 213 guests who had flight delays and 93 of whom arrived at the ship between midnight and 3am.  As far as missing Puerto Montt was concerned, we simply did not have enough time to make the port and there is a cable associated with a new bridge being built that we need to pass under in a low tide condition.  All of this was presented along with questions and answers in an easy to understand style with a bit of humor sprinkled in.  The packed crowd applauded his approach and the session was also live streamed into the Rolling Stone Lounge.

After a nice lunch which we shared with a couple from Oregon, we enjoyed a leisurely afternoon around the ship.  I caught up with my blog and watched a few of my recent YouTube videos that I had missed.  Tonight was a gala night, but we still ate in the LIDO for dinner.  The Captain's welcome toast was in the Main Stage and it was very well attended.  Our diet Cokes were really watered down to the point of not being enjoyable.  Afterwards a very pretty Brazilian singer, Claudia Bossle entertained us.  She was okay but sounded too much like a lounge singer and frequently referred to an iPad. We then adjourned to the Gallery Bar to hopefully watch the national championship football game between Michigan and Washington.  As the game time of 09:30 approached, the bar staff was not able to bring up the game on the ship's TV system.  I fired up the Fubo APP on my iPhone and we proceeded to watch the game on that device along with a couple from California whose grandson was at the game and a lady attorney from Ann Arbor.  We watched to the bitter end at nearly 2am.  In the end, Washington lost and finished #2 in the nation.

It was a long day and fortunately, there was no need to be up at the crack of dawn tomorrow.  I also noted that the internet in our room continued to be poor to non-existent and sent a message to Guest services reporting the problem.  Tomorrow is another sea day so there will be time for resting as the programming is pretty light.