Yorkeys Knob and more

Our journey from Brisbane to Yorkeys Knob was a bit more low key than it has been recently, yep there's the usual business to take care of but generally speaking we're temporarily off the hook. The audits are over and we've been able to morph back into a routine. Sea days gave space for a barbeque organised by our Deck department. Held on our aft mooring deck, we all assembled and grabbed a spot of lunch, BBQ style. 

Arriving into Yorkeys Knob for me was met with a sense of dread. We were tendering again..... This time on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef! A true natural wonder. Unfortunately when you're working, much of any wonder is a bit lost on you. You're not going to find me swimming amongst said natural wonder, tendering means I'll be working hard to send others to enjoy it. It all feels so close but so far. In the lead up to our arrival we held an arrival briefing on the bridge, the highlight of which was the weather, which was looking a bit sketchy. We're in tropical Australia now. The humidity is unreal, and when the clouds part, the heat is equally impressive. My responsibility today was getting our guests back on board. Personally I see this as one of the more stressful parts of the operation. Running a smooth return for guests is problematic as you have to rely on a regular supply of boats to get folk home to the ship. But getting that supply relies on the ship being able to unload it's human cargo in a timely manner to return said boats back to me.

With a 40 minute run from ship to shore can present challenges to that plan!!

Enter stage left the weather.......

Tropical Australia clearly enjoys some exciting weather and they saved it for us. My iine of sight to the ship disappeared. The local mountains disappeared. My morale disappeared. The weather played it's ace card and man did it rain. However, this is normal for the locals and the Yorkeys Knob Boat club where we were based had a blitz spirit and cracked on. The live music in the bar continued to play my favourite tunes, Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Oasis, Guns and Roses. Meanwhile the rain teemed down accompanied by thunder and lightning. The rain was warm, the wind blew, the ship dragged it's anchor! Everyone involved in the operation had their own moment of jeopardy!! The locals looked at the radar and told me, 'give it 45 minutes mate'

45 minutes later, we were golden. Obviously. Who doubted it?

The day continued, we got everyone on board. However, on this occasion we needed to wait for a zero count. By which I mean the ship needs to have officially counted on each of its guests until it could say with confidence that they were all on board.

So for us as shore party that meant we had a wait. 11 of us waiting for all tenders to unload their passengers, have them go through my security screening having scanned on. Once the ship hit a zero count, only then could we come home. That meant time to kill.

It had been a hot and humid day....

So with a bar so close, and with a thirst on I thought I'd treat myself. This was the last tender port of this world voyage, if ever there's a time for a cold beer, this is the time.

That beer was a thing of beauty and about an hour later we got the call to strike the shore party. All guests were safely on board, all that was left was to jump on the shore tender and head home. Another long day nailed.