Tuesday, Day 59 - Mar 6 - Cruising the Java Sea, Opps, not Yet! Benoa Harbor, Bali Still.

We wake up back along side the dock and a few minutes later, at 8AM, the Captain comes on the ship's PA system and tells us the obvious. The good news is that there are no leaks and since the ship was built with an ice strengthened hull he does not feel that we have any problems. BUT, there are hard and fast procedures that must be followed. We are currently waiting a dive team that will check out the hull and give the approval that the ship is sea worthy. Then Lloyds Register and the Regent Company will give us the new schedule and approval to sail. The team is on the way. But currently we are not cleared to go ashore so it will be a sea day for us just as originally scheduled.

OK, we are in a hurry up and wait mode. We go to breakfast, Dick goes to his lectures and Carolyn goes to Quilling. She finally gets all her cards finished. The one we do today is a sailing ship. Several people ask if we should use brown paper instead of blue. When the ship hit the mud we got an explosion of muddy water around the bow. We all laugh.

Dick joins Carolyn for lunch since there is French onion soup on the menu. While we are eating, Jamie comes on the PA system to tell us the dive team will be here by 7PM and that the captain has cleared us to go ashore with an all aboard of 8PM. Some of the crew make a b-line for the gangway along with some passengers.

We have no desire to get out in the heat. It is even hotter today. We do go topside and take some pictures of the harbor and all the water sports and tender boat activity. It is so humid there is a haze near the water most of the day. We are sitting at the dock where Silver Seas was to be today and now there are three ships in the outer harbor: NCL, Silver Seas and a Europa ship. The Europa ship is really far out! The harbor is very busy. The tenders are lined up trying to get everyone to the dock or back to their ship. One of the ships is using the local party type boat to move more people at a time....maybe NCL.
Some of these pictures aren't very good due to the haze and distance, but the activity is mind boggling!

 Traffic congestion

 Europa

 Silver Seas and fuel lighter

 NCL

 Across the harbor

 Duck!

 Waiting

 Late in the day...black speck are fishermen right on the edge of the ship channel.

 Party boat on nightly run

We work on the blog and read in the afternoon. Jamie and Dana have invited us to their table this evening. By dinner time the divers have not showed up, but are expected any minute. Dick is predicting we won’t sail until tomorrow at midnight. Hope he is wrong, but that looks like a real possibility. Don’t know if the divers can work at night, but they still haven’t showed up at 9PM when we all leave the dining room. Jamie was very surprised when he hears they still haven't showed up! The biggest problem is we have been told we can only sail around high tide. There is one tonight at midnight and another one around noon tomorrow. We are definitely going to miss some of our last three ports before Singapore, the question is which ones.

Guess we will find out tomorrow.  Now it is time for a good night's rest.