Day 104 - Final Day

Day 104 – Bay of Islands to Sydney – Monday 27/8/2012

Weather – Mostly cloudy 14C – 19C

Sunrise – 6.43am

Sunset – 6.13pm

Time difference – plus 1 hours ex Sydney ( we will put it back an hour tonight..wonder why ? :)

At 00:45am Sun Princess crossed into the Australian Ship Reporting area. During the course of the day we continued on a westerly course, and at 12 noon we were 335 miles east of Sydney.

So, this is it. The day that seemed like an eternity away when we left port on the 16th of May has arrived. Our last day of cruising the world. Normally a sea day would be one of relaxing and chilling out. Not today, we had so much to do, people to see, farewells to make, the day absolutely flew by far too quickly.

Well the bags are packed and weighed (thanks to Ian and Mary's hand scales)....and the verdicts is ….we did it, we had to play switcheroo with heavy stuff here, and light stuff there, but eventually we got all four bags under 23kgs...just, so no additional luggage fees we trust.

We had a lunch for Wendy's birthday today. Her birthday is actually tomorrow, but alas we wont be together tomorrow. Donna was one off the major bingo jackpot...yet again !!! There were quite a few 'End of World Cruise' activities around the ship, which were all quite good.

Cool Cruiser drinks this afternoon with all our friends who did the full world cruise today. What an amazing thing that has been, what started as a little thread of a roll call on Cruise Critic, became a big family of over 100 people travelling the world together. I know there will be many folks we probably will not see again, there will be some we come across on other cruises, and there have been some very strong friendships made. We already have a catch up lunch planned in Brisbane at the end of September, and looking at a visit to Sydney in October to see others :)

Our last dinner with our wonderful dinner table partners tonight, and we took the opportunity to celebrate Wendy's birthday again – she's worth a double celebration :)

But the day was really all about saying farewell to all the people whom we have met, and there were so many, not just the Cool Cruisers, but all the other people we met over meals, on tours, in bars, around the pool deck, it really does add up to a lot of handshakes :)

Tomorrow morning at 5.30am the 76th, and final, pilot of this epic voyage will climb aboard to guide us into Sydney Harbour. Shortly afterwards we will pass between North Head and South Head and enter Sydney Harbour.

At 6.20am we will pass abeam of the Sydney Opera House, passing beneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge, just like we did 105 days ago on the 16th of May on the way out to start this magnificent cruise of a lifetime. We will then turn to port around Millars Point and reach our berth at Darling Harbour. I think its about now that we start beating out the words to that famous Peter Allen song about calling Australia home.

We are the first group disembarking, meeting at 7.30am, as we are on a noon flight to Brisbane.

This is the last post that we will make from aboard the Sun Princess. We we get home I will finish posting a few photos from the last ports, and post a review of the cruise.

It has been a blast. I will admit there were days when I struggled to write anything of interest, but I guess your gunna get that when you have a cruise with so many sea days. I know the time difference may have made the continuity a bit disjointed at times, and also when we had many port days in a row when we were cutting through Europe. I am glad that I kept up the daily blog, as we now have a journal/diary of our holiday, that I am sure we would not have had otherwise.

As I mentioned during the blogs, the navigational information I posted each day was a lift from the Navigator notes that came in the Patter each day. I put them in mainly for my benefit, so that I can track where we went when we got home, but I also thought that some folk may have seen an interest in them.

We really appreciate your positive comments and support, we did read them all, but in the main we were not able to reply either due to crook internet connection, or wanting to preserve internet minutes, but rest assured they were all read and appreciated. I would also like to acknowledge the bloggers of previous world cruises, your pioneering blogs gave me the inspiration and motivation to write this, as I got so much pleasure from reading your blogs.

Errrr thats ah, thats ah, thats all folks :)