11/1/08 Fjordland National Park, New Zealand

We’re scheduled to spend the entire day scenic cruising Dusky Sound, Doubtful Sound and Milford Sound in Fjordland National Park. This area has the reputation for being one of the most beautiful in the world and has been compared with the fjords in Norway and Alaska. Unfortunately, the weather along the Tasman Sea coast isn’t always cooperative and the entrances to the Sounds can be tricky to negotiate. As a result, it’s not always possible to get into the Sounds and ships are forced to skip them. I’m hoping we’ll have good luck!

But first, let me tell you about last night. We left Port Chalmers just before 6:00 pm and headed back down the bay (or whatever), past Taiaroa Head and back into the open ocean. It was still daylight and a group of us were sitting in the Lido restaurant, relaxing and doing pretty much nothing. Then the ship lost all electrical power and went totally dead in the water! It was really eerie, with virtually no sound at all, bobbing around in the ocean. Plus it had gotten fairly rough when we reached open water, so we were rolling a bit. The Captain came on the P.A. system to explain what had happened and to tell us to expect some heavy rolling, since without the engines we would drift sideways into the swells. Doesn’t that sound like a lot of fun? Fortunately, they were able to restart the engines and restore power within about fifteen minutes. But it sure seemed a lot longer!

The Captain’s short explanation was that “we dropped an engine”. I don’t remember all of the details but I’ll try to summarize what had happened. An oil sensor on one of the engines signaled a problem and that engine shut down in order to prevent damage. The computer should have adjusted the load on the remaining engine to prevent an overload but, for some reason, that didn’t happen. So the second engine overloaded and shut down. Since the engines generate the ship’s electrical power as well as propulsion, everything went dead. They had to restart both engines, which luckily didn’t take too long. Once we had propulsion, we were able to turn back into the swells and the ride smoothed out again. But a little later, the Captain came on again to say that some guests were smelling smoke in their cabins and to report it to the front desk. This time the explanation was that, after the engines were restarted, there was such a demand for heat (it was pretty cold) that the heating coils had gotten too hot! He asked everyone to lower their cabin thermostats and slowly bring them back to comfortable levels. That seemed to do the trick and we had no more problems that I know of.

Anyway, back to the cruise! The seas had been pretty rough last night and, as we rounded the southern tip and sailed into the Tasman Sea, it got even rougher. We were bouncing around quite a bit as we made our way to Dusky Sound but, as soon as we entered the fjord, the water was like a lake. I’m not going to spend much time describing the scenery in Dusky and Doubtful Sounds, since all I can say is that it was very special and very beautiful. If you’ve ever seen a fjord, you probably know that they are very deep channels carved by glaciers flowing down to the ocean between high mountains. Because they’re sheltered from the winds, there is often a misty look to them that is almost mystical and magical. And it’s usually strangely quiet sailing through a fjord. Passengers just seem to be mesmerized by the scenery. At least, that’s the way it seems to me! Everyone is on deck but there’s very little sound. And today it’s even prettier since we had rain last night, producing a bunch of little waterfalls on the mountains. I loved it!

We sailed all the way through Dusky Sound and back into the Tasman Sea. The weather was getting worse, with extremely strong winds and high seas. We were able to enter Doubtful Sound, which I didn’t feel was quite as pretty as Dusky. Of course, everything is relative. It was still magnificent, just a little less so. Our final scenic cruise was going to be Milford Sound, the most beautiful of them all. We never made it! After sailing around off-shore for a while, the Captain announced that it was just too dangerous to attempt to take the ship through the narrow entrance. It would be our only missed port of the entire six weeks. I was disappointed but safety is the primary concern of a cruise ship Captain and you have to respect his judgment. Besides, the winds were now blowing at seventy miles per hour and seas were running at fifteen feet, occasionally higher. The Tasman Sea was living up to its reputation. We reluctantly left New Zealand and Milford Sound in the distance and headed for Australia.