"During the night, we continued to steam a Southerly course of 188 degrees across the Exmouth Plateau towards the North West Cape of Australia, which we passed early in the afternoon. Dawn Princess is equipped with two stabilizers, one on each side of the vessel. These extend 5.1m from the side of the ship, however, they are retractable and housed in compartments inside the hull below the water level. The ship fins are housed when the ship is in narrow waters, in port or when the sea conditions are calm. Stabilizers direct the flow of water to create lift in the same way airplanes utilize the flow of air to fly. This lift counteracts the rolling motion of the ship and reduces the rolling action by 90%. The fin angle is adjusted automatically by the system which uses a gyroscope to detect the ships motion."
Today is the day! It is Barry's 79th birthday. I organized a champagne breakfast to be delivered to his cabin this morning, but as he ordered one as well, I end up sharing the excessive amount of food and having a nice breakfast on my balcony too.
Today is the day, a very big day: it is as well the final of the Scrapheap Boat Challenge!! For those who have not been reading since the beginning of the trip, our "Table 51" decided to enter the competition and built a self propelled vessel able to cross the pool back and forth carrying 24 cans of beers. Barry and I went shopping at Bunnings during our stop-over in Brisbane and I brought back my boogie-board.
The intention was to cut and shape the boogie-board with our little saw and glue some parts underneath to end up with an unsinkable catamaran, propelled.... with an umbrella! We then realized we needed a larger saw and decided to call for a little help from our friends... but not with any intention to cheat at that stage.
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Staff Engineer Officer, Davor Pavlovic-Kalifo, and Barry |
After a few days in the dry dock, "The vessel" has been delivered to my stateroom this morning. I have to admit that I was speechless. She is absolutely beautiful. A splendid super-structure with several decks has been added including bridge and staircases. She has been painted and named: Dawn Princess! We were so touched by the attention and the beauty of the finished product. My steward who delivered the vessel to my cabin asked if we had already selected a godfather and a godmother. Actually, the cast of the TV serie "The love boat" are the official godparents of our current ship. I therefore decided to improvise a small naming ceremony in my stateroom with the members of "Table 51". I asked to Lindsay to be the godmother of our vessel, but she was unfortunately unable to attend the function due to work commitments. I am very thankful that our Staff Captain, Salvatore Caccioppoli, accepted to be the godfather of our vessel and briefly stopped by to drop some bubbly on our little replica of the Dawn Princess.
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| With Barry, Salvatore, Deborah and Helen |
We all wore our black "Dawn Princess/Table 51" embroidered collard shirts and headed to the main pool on deck 12.
We were the first one to be timed across the pool and four judges marked as well our artistic impression. Our umbrella propulsion was maybe not the best idea, and I was very lucky not to get my team disqualified while pushing the vessel.
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| Helen, Deborah, Max, Barry and I. |
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| With Salvatore and Barry |
We were then followed by the "SS Love Boat", which was a larger polystyrene container with a little battery operated propeller. They had a fantastic advertising on the Wake show on TV this morning: Sail on the maiden voyage of the "SS Love Boat", unsinkable, vast quantity of beers on board, ask cruise director for tickets!
I was equally impressed with the catamaran from Harvey Bay that finished at full speed, but lost one can of beer.
The winners and last team to compete were the "Titanic", sorry "Cinatit", who had a blow up mattress loaded with professional dishwasher trays and powered by drill looking batteries in the style of an old steam boat.
We had lots of fun all day long and finished at the Steakhouse for Barry's birthday.
Once again, many, many thanks to all the people who made our day unforgettable and worked on our little marvel "Dawn Princess".
You are the highlight of our trip and really made a difference in the way we will remember this cruise.
