Queen Mary 2 (QM2)

I thought I would wrap up the cruise with a short blog about QM2. During one of her refurbishments the entry wall to Britannia restaurant was changed to incorporate all of Cunards vessels over the years. This was briliiant as I had for some time struggled to find information about my first cruise when at the age of 7, I took my parents to the USA aboard Ivernia.

What I learnt was that there were two Ivernias. Here is the first:

and the one we sailed on. She was a fairly new ship in 1957 but stabilisers had yet to be invented so seasickness was a real challenge for me!

Our return trip 3 years later was on the original Queen Mary which we visited in July 2019

(http://hallingholidays.blogspot.com/2019/07/queen-elizabeth-san-francisco-to-cabo.html). 

At the time Queen Mary seemed like a large ship (well at 1019.5 ft she was some 15% longer than Titanic - 883 ft). Suprisingly Queen Elizabeth (our vessel in 2019 - effectively QE3) with a length of 965 ft was smaller, but did appear much larger due to being almost 50 ft taller. What is a vivid memory is crossing mid-Atlantic with the first QE which was one of the many paintings aboard QM2.

A key part of any voyage is the relationship with the restaurant serving staff. Randy (20 years service) and Jerome paid great attention to our dining needs while Sommelier Reinson’s expertise was extraordinary and certainly added to Alan’s wine knowledge (and easily surpassed my limited contribution).

Our head waitress Aurica was hawk like in ensuring nothing was overlooked. Her personality was very entertaining, so it was sad but not surprising when she left QM2 in Cape Town to join Queen Anne’s inaugural voyage (in early May).

A particularly bonnie team when you consider what they had to deal with!:

So where did we travel? The old days of going to an upper deck to view our location on a paper chart has been replaced with a TV channel. They changed the tracking at Colombo so the segment from Singapore in the following shot is missing. This trip had more sea days than previously encountered, and we were wondering how we would fare on the 7 day leg from Namibia to Grand Canaria. Answer, we ran out of time to take up many of the offered activities.

The channel alternated with other information and included air and sea temperatures. These were each 30 around the equator – but as one comedian said – why tell us the sea temperature – I have no intention of going in…

We were extremely fortunate with the weather with calm/slight seas for most of the cruise. The only exception were the two days between Durban to Cape Town where swells of 7 metres and force 7 winds were encountered. Here is a view from our balcony.

And here is one 2 decks up from the waterline. It made very little difference to those aboard as QM2 remained steady with minimal movement and certainly nothing to feel sick about! (Indeed looking through the window was more akin to watching TV!)

The only challenge with QM2 is that her cruise speed at over 20 knots was quite quick for sea life to keep up. That was not going to stop one pod of dolphins that opted to enjoy the slower wake rather than the more usual bow pressure wave play area.

There were also flying fish on most days but they were generally in ones and twos. There was one exception though.

A flying school?

Hopefully that gives a feel for life aboard. We ended up with a credit due to the route change and are eyeing up Southampton to Dubai via the Suez on Queen Anne. That of course will depend on the middle east settling down......