Isle of Pines, New Caledonia

Isle of Pines, New Caledonia

A postcard from fellow cruise lover, Fiona (Cruisenut) who's on a south pacific cruise at the moment.

She says that the weather is good, and she thinks her ship is beautiful.

They're already planning their next cruise.

Thanks for the postcard Fiona, I've got a nice QE2 postcard here for you that I'll send away soon.

Enjoy the rest of your cruise!

Auckland's Amazing Acrobatic Tugboat

We recently sailed from Auckland's beautiful harbour aboard P&O's Oriana which is currently on a world voyage.

The local tugboat captain skillfully helped the 65,000 tonne Ocean Liner gracefully reverse from her berth, and sent her on her way to Sydney.

But after he'd done the job, the Tug Boat captain showed us what he, and his powerful tug could really do.

To the Auckland Port Authority, and their Tug Operators, thanks for giving us a memory that will stick with us for years!

Please forgive the camera movement in the video. It's very hard to hold a mobile phone camera still while trying to celebrate at the same time.

Rob's new QE2 Website / Forum

Ocean Liner enthusiast, Rob Lightbody has created a new website dedicated to QE2 at http://theqe2story.com.

He's set up a discussion forum at http://theqe2story.com/forum/

Rob's done an great job in preserving the legacy of QE2 for future generations by his photos and recollections. I'm grateful to him for helping me understand why she's such a wonderful ship.

Where old ships go to die

Here's a CBS video about the ship graveyeards of Bangladesh.

"M/S Funchal"

A Postcrossing post card from Vitoria in Portugal.

Funchal was originally built in 1961 to cruise between Lisbon, Madiera and the Azores. At 153m in length, she's much smaller than many of today's cruise ships, but she still has all of the essentials, including two restaurants, three bars, a theatre, a library and a casino.

She can accommodate over 400 passengers, and regularly cruises around the world during the Northern winter.

Thanks for the lovely postcard, Vitoria!

Improvements: Speed & Accuracy

Over the last few days I've improved the response time of most ShipWatcher functions. It should be loading a lot faster now. If you notice delays, please let me know.

One other thing I've improved is estimating where a ship is. Some ships don't broadcast their position. They only tell us where they came from and where they're headed. I've given ShipWatcher a bit more intelligence so that it can guess the latitude and longitude of a ship, even if it doesn't know its exact position. It does this by looking at journeys from other ships that may have travelled a similar route in the past.

If any of the information seems incorrect, please let me know. I can't watch every single ship all the time, so sometimes I don't see when the data is wrong.