Ocean Cruising at 26 Knots

On December 9th we boarded the Celebrity Millennium along with 2,000 other passengers at the ultra modern cruise ship terminal in Singapore. The boarding process was very efficient given the sheer number of people and soon we were enjoying our beautiful ocean view cabin and meeting Augusto, our Filipino cabin attendant. When he said he would do everything in his power to make our stay enjoyable, he wasn’t kidding.

This was a great way to cross oceans compared to our 44 ft. sailboat. Loved watching the big waves come by the porthole.

The Millennium, a 965 ft. long ship, was recently refit and was in excellent condition with  indoor and outdoor swimming pools, hot tubs, art galleries, gym, and a large dinning room. We had planned to go back into town that day but ended up spending the rest of the day just relaxing and exploring the ship. 

The hot tubs were a great place to meet people. I had a nice chat with an older gentleman from Siberia. 

The onboard gym had all the latest equipment and great trainers.

With my upcoming knee surgery in Seattle, the smartest thing we did was getting connected with two excellent trainers in the state-of-the-art gym at the front of the ship run by Canyon Ranch Spa. I had scheduled a one-on-one training session so I could get my left knee in better shape to withstand the surgery and my trainer, Njemia, who formerly played with the Croatian National Basketball team, soon had me doing a combination of stretching exercises and machine workouts to get my knee toned up. We were fairly religious about attending the daily 7:30 yoga/Pilates stretching class and doing an aerobic workout afterwards. It helped to keep the pounds gained in the dining room at bay.

The forward lounge with a view of downtown Singapore.

At around 5:00 pm everyone gathered in the aft of the ship as they cast off the lines for our 12-day voyage to Bangkok, Vietnam, and Hong Kong. We dressed up a little and went up to the huge grand dining room and enjoyed our first sumptuous meal on board. The selection of food was excellent and the service was very attentive. It was immediately obvious to us that we’d have to exert some serious diet control if we were going to get off the ship alive in Hong Kong.

Meryl really enjoyed the opportunity to get dressed up for dinner, compared to our normal shorts and flip flops on our sailboat.

Our goal was to relax, but we soon found there were so many activities scheduled each hour that it was difficult not to participate. We typically did our breakfasts and lunches at the 10th floor buffet that featured at least five different ethnic foods, tons of fruits and veggies, and a wonderful ice cream shop.  For dinner we split between the buffet (which was quick and easy) and the four-star service in the formal dining room.  Most nights you could dress business casual but some nights were deemed “chic” with guys in tuxes and women in evening gowns.

After dinner we would rush off to catch the 7:00 pm show in the theatre, several of which featured the in-house singing/dance troupe (all from Australia) doing a Broadway tribute, pop hits, or a dance review. Other acts included a very funny American comedian (think of Carrot Top on steroids), a former Russian gymnastics Olympic team member and her husband (think of Circe de Soleil), and a singing trio who did pop hits. Not Las Vegas quality, but still pretty good for ship board entertainment. 

We didn’t have enough energy to go to the late night disco, but we did attend a Beatle’s Trivia Night and were throughly trounced by a table of 30'ish Brits who could answer such esoteric questions such as: 1) Name the order the Beatles walked across the zebra stripe crossing on the album cover for Abbey Road, 2) who was wearing jeans, 3) who was barefoot, 4) what car was in the background, and 5) what was the license plate of the car.  We were way out of our league.

One goal of mine for the cruise was to do a tour of the ship, but I found they charged $175 for a two-hour tour, which I thought was a little pricy. One day I saw the captain and first officer sitting having lunch and brazenly went up and introduced myself, telling him a little of our ocean crossing experiences. I'm sure he wasn’t very impressed, but we did score a tour to the bridge of the ship. 

Their AIS system, which shows vessels in front of the ship, was very similar to the one we have on Flying Cloud.

It was reassuring to see port and starboard lookouts with binoculars looking for small fishing boats ahead of the ship.

For security purposes they were very vague about the whole thing, the “we’ll contact you.” About five days later we just happened to see a note on our door to meet at a certain location in 40 minutes for a tour. When we got there we saw about 10 other people (we found the bridge tours are only offered to the “high roller” cruising couples staying in the expensive suites). We were given a full security pat down and wanding, then led through a labyrinth of high security doors and passages to the bridge. The tour was lead by the second officer, a young woman from Malta. She showed us the navigation equipment (just a bigger version of the same technology we use) and explained how they kept a lookout for small boats such as ours. She was interested in doing a voyage in a small boat such as ours so she had as many questions to ask as we did. 

By the end of the cruise we had a great routine going and were feeling pretty relaxed. We had mixed feelings about the cruise coming to an end but with Christmas just around the corner we were ready to say hello to all our family now in Hong Kong for the holidays.