Still docked across from Seahorse World

My French balcony suite aboard the Orion. Photo by David Lansing.

You, no doubt, have been on lots of cruises but this is only my second (and my first was nothing more than three days traveling from Los Angeles to Ensenada, Mexico and back) so perhaps this is perfectly normal, but after we embarked yesterday and after we had our mandatory lifeboat drill where most of us learned how to properly put on our life preservers (true confession: even after being shown several times how to slip it through my arms, “just as you would a coat,” I couldn’t figure it out), and after a lovely four-course dinner that included Tasmanian scallops and fillet of blue-eye trevalla, and slow-cooked loin of local lamb and vanilla bean panna cotta with strawberry gelato—even after all that, we were still berthed at the Beauty Point wharf across from Seahorse World. Even more startling to me, we were still there (as was the short and stout Tassie security guard who wouldn’t let us board yesterday without passports) this morning when Lobke escorted me to a table in the Constellation restaurant on the Third Deck for, as she called it, “A little breakie.”

“Lobke,” I said, using the excuse of a whispered conversation to lean in close, “the ship hasn’t gone anywhere.”

Lobke laughed and patted my back consolingly. No, that’s right, she said. “Today you have the full day gourmet tour around Launceston (or “Lawn-CES-ton,” as Lobke pronounces it) and we don’t actually sail until late this afternoon.”

Ah.

So an expedition cruise that stays berthed at the Beauty Point wharf for the first 24 hours of the cruise. That’s probably quite normal, isn’t it? After all, like I say, I haven’t done a whole lot of cruises. But in the movies and TV shows it seems like people get on the ship, a horn is blown, and off they go. But maybe that’s just what happens in the cinema.