Hello everyone, door number 11 ?
Today’s model on top of the d20 there is a Venator class Star Destroyer. It’s the ship that made a debut in the Episode 2 movie, Attack of the Clones and it was the precursor ship for the iconic Imperial Star Destroyers from the original movies. The basic shape is of a triangular wedge, with further triangular sections at the back before the engines come in. The actual ship has two control towers, although the tiny model can only add one.
It’s a pretty good shape for a space battleship, as having the triangle like that means that all of the guns on the sides can be pointed forwards for lots of firepower. The Venator’s thing was to be a fighter carrier as well, so that red stripe in the middle covers a huge hangar.
With today’s model being a big ship, I thought I’d go back to the cruise :-). And bring out the ship pictures ! I saw a few on the cruise this year and some last year too, from grey ships to cargo ships to ferries and cruise ships. First up …
Yep, gotta be Borealis. This was from the final port, where we stopped in at Lisbon and another moment spotting a place where I could set up a good picture. I like this one (Although Ellardy could have done with more light there ! Maybe need to grab a friend with a torch next time)
Sharing the port with us was the big P&O cruise ship Iona. Whereas Borealis is 231m long and 65,000 tonne, Iona is 344m long and 184,000 tonnes. That’s a similar step up to the difference between Borealis and last year’s ship, MS Maud at 136m long and 16,000 tonnes. Maud (now Midnatsol again) is a small and very cozy ship where you could happily wander through the decks and chill out. Borealis is a bit bigger again and it was still lovely to wander through her decks and go outside on the Promenade areas and generally chill out either inside or outside. And we were looked after very well by excellent crews on both ships.
Would Iona be a similar experience ? I’ll just have to check that out at a later date :-D. One thing I want to try and avoid is being on a party boat and Iona is listed on the P&O site as being Family Friendly. Could be a bit too young a catchment. Will have to do more research ahead of the next cruise. I’d happily go on Hurtigruten (either ferry or Expedition) and Fred Olsen’s ships again but I’m wanting to go to varied places and see what it’s like on the various ships. (That’s a couple of recommendations by the way!)
Going back a year …
That’s HNoMS Maud, taken from cruise ship MS Maud. She’s a fleet tanker in the Norwegian Navy auxiliary fleet and is very similar to Britain’s Tide class tankers. It was a fun spot seeing that ship from across the harbour in Stavanger. You can pick up exactly what ship this one is by that A530 on the stern, that’s the pennant number. Like …
That’s the US Navy ship USS Oak Hill, you can just about pick out the pennant number on the front there. She’s LSD-51, a landing ship dock where landing craft (holding troops and tanks and trucks) go into an open area at the back of the ship. We have some of these as well, similar ships called the Bay Class LSDA (Landing Ship Dock Auxiliary). Oak Hill docked up a little bit of time after we did and was still there when we sailed away.
It was fun seeing the smaller ships around as well. In Norway, the ports would typically have a collection of offshore support vessels looking to supply the oil rigs. They weren’t in Spain and Portugal but we did see …
That’s the research ship Odon de Buen (name’s up front). Definitely wondering what that ship would be up to. I think she’s either running underwater vehicles on tethers for survey work or could have been doing seabed cable laying. Maybe she’s looking for oil to open up a new gold rush for Portugal or Spain.
That’s the Portugese frigate F333 NRP Bartolomeu Dias, which started out life as HNLMS Van Nes in the Dutch Navy before being sold to Portugal. That’s about the best angle I could get there, although I could have maybe gone to the top of the nearby bridge … maybe next time :-D.
I think I need to hit the lifeboat in search of snacks soon, a couple more ?
Can’t forget the pilots. The big ships wouldn’t get into port without incident as regularly as they do without the Pilots and the Tugboats to help them in and out again without bumping into things.
Time to grab an excuse to mention someone 🙂 I have a Curlylocksgamer stream on in the background for the desktop and am enjoying listening in to chill pirate vibes as she’s playing Sea Of Thieves. I’ve met Curly twice at the two Creator North meet ups, she’s fun, good to watch. Struggles with disability issues though, so it’s been wonderful to see her being able to have fun with us on the streams again lately. Lovely lady.
That’s the smaller of the two ferries that was in Portsmouth when we got back home, the bigger one is off to the left of picture. The other one was a Brittany Ferries roll on roll off ship. And on the other side …
We could see into the Navy Yard over there … with Wave Knight (another older fleet tanker) in front of one of the Type 45 Destroyers (dunno which one) behind getting some work done. Always good to see the ships.
Time to hit post I think, it’s been fun doing the cruise posts a little bit differently to last year. I’ll talk about the ports at some point as well :-D.