Spirit of Adventure blog

We set sail from Dover on our Lisbon and Spain’s Atlantic Coast cruise. Once all guests were checked in and all provisions loaded, we conducted our mandatory passenger muster and sailed upon completion of the drill.

Our first port of call was St. Peter Port in Guernsey. We picked up our pilot and agreed on our anchor position. The weather was far better than forecast. We proceeded with the launching of our tenders and rigging the tender platform. Shortly after the 1st tender went ashore to conduct the pier setup the weather deteriorated. Just after 8 o’clock, I made an announcement informing guests that we would hold off the operation as the conditions were beyond our safe operating limitations. The weather further worsened after 10 o’clock, so I made the decision to retrieve all tenders, secure all the equipment and sadly cancel our call to Guernsey. Our guests were very understanding and supportive…with the safety of our guests and crew always being my paramount consideration.

We had an option to proceed to La Coruna at full speed and arrive the next evening, but we decided to stick with our original schedule as we had a Welcome Party planned and our “earlier arrival” would have been a late evening one. The Welcome Party was well attended and everyone seemed to enjoy the evening. Needless to say, dinner was amazing.

Arrival to La Coruna was smooth, a beautiful sunny day, perfect for spending it exploring the city. My Chief Officer Vincent and I went for a run. We trailed east towards the Castillo de San Anton, then north to Torre de Hercules and the Aquarium Finisterrae. There we parted ways as Vincent returned to the ship, while I continued running along the Riazor beach all the way to the Riazor Stadium, home of the local team Deportivo La Coruna, which won the Primera back in 2000. By the time I got back to the ship my tracking app showed I did 10k in 56min. Back on board I joined guests for a very pleasant lunch.

As we were preparing for departure I observed thin, but very long, rope on our port side, very close to the ship. The Pilot was already on board, so I asked him if his team on the pilot boat could assist in identifying whether the rope was caught. Unfortunately, my suspicions were correct. I called the agent to procure the diving team ASAP. However, our call coincided with Galician Literature Day, as a local holiday. It took some convincing, but we were able to persuade the divers to attend and assist.

With our calculations the absolute deadline for departure was early the next morning. Divers arrived by 8 o’ clock that evening, and our deck 6 aft was well attended by our guests to witness this rather unusual form of evening entertainment. The Divers did the job, untangled the rope caught around our port propeller and we were ready to go by half past 10. Kirill backed us out of the port, swung nicely and aligned for the exit course, and as we disembarked our pilot, we increased the speed and proceeded for the open sea.

Kind Regards
Captain Franko Papić