June 19-20 Savannah Georgia

After the morning in St. Augustine we took the short drive up I95 to Savannah, stopping at a Sonny's BBQ in west St. Augustine on the way.  Like our drive on Sunday, there was rain along the way.  We were lucky that all of the rain we saw during our trip occurred when we were driving between locations.  Never had to put our ponchos on.

We arrived in Savannah, checked into the Fairfield Inn Historic District hotel, and walked down to the river.  Savannah is famous for its squares, and this was the first we hit in our wanderings around the old city.  Franklin Square and the Haitian Monument, memorializing the black soldiers who fought for independence from the British.

Down to the river

 We ate here both nights in Savannah.  Really liked it.

 Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts, has a big presence in Savannah.  This is one of the more mobile monuments.

 River traffic

 Waving girl statue

 Girl scouts were everywhere in the city.  Several groups stayed at our hotel, and filled the breakfast area both mornings.  Also in uniform at our hotel -- a group of National Guard soldiers, some in standard battle dress camouflage, others in flight jumpsuits.  The scout group below was doing their pilgrimage to the birthplace of the Scouts.

 The defining image of Savannah -- open square filled with live oaks dripping with Spanish moss

 Forsyth Fountain in Forsyth Park

 The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist.  A docent gave a very informative 12-minute talk about the building and its furnishings. 

 Colonial Park Cemetery

 We ate lunch at the Pirate's House.  A very reasonable buffet lunch, and we weren't drugged and carried off through the tunnel to find ourselves on a ship bound for China.
While we were eating it poured down rain.  Yet as we finished it had stopped.  We still needed to cover the cameras while walking around for the next half-hour or so, but didn't need to put the ponchos on.  We were quite lucky with the weather.

 Factors Walk

 City Hall

 Steps down to the River -- pretty steep

 

Chippewa Square: This is where Forest Gump's bench was located for the filming  of the movie.  The bench was strictly a prop, and now located in the Savannah museum.

Next stop: Charleston SC

June 18, 2017 St. Augustine Florida

We made a quick trip to Florida from North Carolina to respond to a jury duty summons.  We could have postponed it, but better to get it over with when there's nothing else on the calendar.  Fortunately it was all over in 1.5 hours (I only got to see the first 30 minutes of "The Martian" before I was dismissed).  So instead of zooming back to NC, we decided to visit some historical spots on the way back, spreading the trip out over five days rather than one long driving day.

First up was St. Augustine, and the Castillo de San Marcos.

 It's been more than 30 years since we've visited St. Augustine.  The fort is smaller than I remembered it. 

We spent Sunday afternoon and Monday morning walking around the city.  Lots of old places separating the Starbucks.

Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine

 Sometime the Starbucks were in old places.

Lightner Museum.   A newlywed couple was being photographed in the gardens in front of the building. 

 Flagler College

 Foyer of the college

 Bridge of the Lions.  Traffic was snarled here Sunday afternoon when the bridge stuck in the up position.

City gate -- entrance to old town

 Interesting door to 32 Marine St...or is it 3200 Marine?

 We walked rather than riding the tour trams.  There are at least 2 competing tour companies.  For the 5 days of Sunday through Thursday on this little trip we did over 100K steps according to our Fitbits.

 Local resident.  Note the left rear leg

 The sundial on the front of the Cathedral Basilica has lat/long on it (enlarged at bottom of picture).  That location would be in the middle of the river.  Another conflict between church and science.  Actual location is about N29 53" 33.8'  W 81 18" 44.9'

Next up: Savannah GA

July 9  Miles Traveled

I was going to summarize the trip with things like number of countries visited, but if you're interested in that you can count them up yourself by reviewing the blog.  The one thing I can report on is miles traveled.

Note: This turned out way more analytical than I had expected.  

Here's the executive summary:
Ship's "log" miles traveled: 46,501 nautical miles.  That's not right, it should be about 48,500.  The Bradleys traveled about 55,900nm because we took airplanes and buses and foot travel that the boat couldn't.

Back to the blog post:
Oceania distributed a 4-sheet paper entitled Nautical Miles Traveled that listed the miles traveled between ports.  They list 90 mileage figures for a total of 91 ports, with Miami repeated at the end.

It says Insignia traveled 46,501 nautical miles around the world.  That's a lot of wandering, since the circumference of the earth is 24,901 statute miles, or 21,638 nautical miles.  (When you drive on the highway, it's statute miles of 5280 feet each and speed is measured in miles per hour, mph.  When you sail you travel in nautical miles of 6000 feet each, and speed is nautical miles per hour, knots.  If everybody adopted the metric system we wouldn't have this problem.)

Unfortunately, their numbers are wrong.  I sure hope they didn't use those numbers to calculate when to stop for gas (bunkering is the quaint verb they use for "filling up").  By my guess they're about 1000nm too low, and the real number should be more like 47,500nm. 

There are some obvious mistakes.  The distance from Brisbane to Sydney is listed at 48nm when it's more like 550nm.  I'm guessing that the "log" was created before the actual trip, and when there were changes in the ports visited (you will recall that Newcastle was scrapped because of a harbor protest on our scheduled day so Oceania substituted Brisbane) they got the ports right but not necessarily the distances.  (In this specific case they did get the Townsville to Brisbane leg pretty close, although 50nm shorter than I measured it.)

Also, based on my measurements of actual distances traveled (see below) I can also argue that most of the Insignia log numbers are too low by 5% on about half of the legs.  Some are remarkably close to my measurement, others are off.  So we can probably add another 1000nm for "plan vs. actual" distances traveled.

 As for the Bradleys, we traveled 55,900nm or 64,300 statute miles on our trip around the world. 

I carried a hand-held GPS unit with me almost all the time, a Magellan Triton 400.  I left home with several of them.  A good thing since one of them failed spectacularly in mid-February.  The map below is the composite of 224 individual tracks I saved with the GPSes.

I carried it on our excursions, and got accurate route maps.  Here's an example, our VIP tour of military bases on Oahu. I used some other track maps earlier in this blog.

I only had to "recreate" 3 or 4 tracks due to GPS failure or operator error.  Those may not be as accurate, but a good guess as to the mileages covered.  I did have the GPS sitting out on the veranda whenever we were sailing, so I got those tracks also.  Sometimes there were interesting events.  Here's the run from Brunei to Borneo.

The "nose" in the middle of the track was apparently to get away from coastal waters so they could dump the grey and black water holding tanks.  (At every lifeboat drill I talked to one of the ship's officers and asked him these kind of questions.  He was very accommodating.)  The outward extension is about 30nm.  Since my track was 417nm and their log was 377nm I think that they listed the planned rather than actual mileage.

We also didn't travel everywhere the ship went.  We took six overnight trips (Phinda in SAfrica (1 night), Taj Mahal (3), Bagan in Myanmar (1), Angkor Wat in Cambodia (2), Beijing (3) and Hanoi (1)) , spending a total of 11 nights away from the boat.  So we racked up air miles and bus miles that people on the boat didn't.  Conversely, the boat traveled while we were gone.  We eventually caught up, going a different route, so our mileage was different.

Finally, all of our shore excursions weren't in the ships log.  My guess is over 7000nm greater than the boat actually traveled.  About 4Knm were in the overnights, the remaining 3K in run-of-the-mill bus shore excursions.  Our trip to Amboseli Park in Kenya was about 600 air miles.  That was just one of our 56 shore excursions.  However, on Rangiroa we we only walked about 3 miles while we were off the boat.  

No matter how you measure it, it was a long way but it had to be to pack everything into it.  My spreadsheet is available for anyone wishing to check my work.

July 1  Miami

The end of the cruise, a sad day.  But the most suggested quote was Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened, attributed to Dr. Suess.  The actual origin is suspect, but the sentiment is correct.

Our last sunset on the cruise

 Breakfast at "our" table.  We probably ate half our on board meals at this table or its immediate neighbors. 

 Perhaps because several other ships also arrived this morning, it took several hours before we could leave the ship.  A last look back at Insignia.

After the long wait, passage through Customs was a breeze.  Oceania had arranged the bags in the arrival hall by name -- so our 6 suitcases were together with a big card that said Bradley.  With the help of a porter, we gathered them up and headed for the Customs inspection.  The first officer, ominously latex gloved, asked "Any fruit?" to which we replied in the negative and he passed us on.  At the inspection table I gave the inspector our Customs form and he asked "Last name?" to which we both replied "Bradley."  He said "Thanks, that's all" and we were done.

 Oceania offered complimentary limo service within 100 miles of the port for us worldies, and we took advantage.  Because of the luggage it was actually a van, but quite luxurious, and we didn't even have to share.  After a little less than an hour we were in Boca.

 The view from our condo.  Just the same as when we left.  What a great trip!