Boarding the Crown Princess

August 27, 2016

This is the official brochure photo of the Crown Princess. We understood there to be 3000 passengers on this cruise.

Brenda onboard the Crown Princess at Pier 91 in Seattle with the city in the background. At about 2pm we had gotten onboard and dropped items in our stateroom and were exploring the ship. At left you can see Seattle's Space Needle just to the left of Brenda's head. At the other end of the highrise buildings of the downtown area you can see the arches associated with Seattle's stadium.

Having been delivered to the dock complex about noon, we had gone through lines with hundreds of people for ticket and document check, security scanning, etc. It was quite efficient considering that there were about 3000 passengers. Finally we were on the dockside at 12:25, looking at the side of this enormous vessel.

Once we had gotten through the lines and up the four-level catwalk that you can see in the ship photo to get us to the 7th floor of the ship, we could look back to see the nature of the lines of people still coming.

It is fascinating to me to see the heavy equipment used for the loading of baggage and supplies.

This large-scale luggage operation involves putting the luggage into large rolling boxes which are then lifted to the ship.

We explored the ship up to its top at the 18th level and enjoyed the views of the space needle and the downtown Seattle area.

We caught up with Bob and Suzanne about 2pm and had a snack on the 15th floor of the ship before doing more exploration of the ship.

We explored all the upper levels of the ship where you could get good viewpoints and enjoyed watching the boating associated with a large harbor like this one. We watched a tug maneuver a fuel barge up to the ship for fueling and watched a police boat travel through.

It was interesting to watch all the types of ships that would move into and out of the Seattle port area.

Suzanne and Bob on one of the top decks with Seattle behind them.

We watched the port activity until it was time for the ship to leave. To the south you could see a large collection of cranes associated with the port activity. There were examples of all kinds of boat activity, from ferries to sailboats. We gathered a large crowd on the top deck to celebrate the departure.

We enjoyed the time on deck with Suzanne and Bob and were glad to get to the point of departure on the cruise to the Inside Passage. The above picture was at about 7:40pm.

I am fascinated by tugs, even when they are pushing an old scow like this one.

We busied ourselves settling in on the ship, but at about 10:30pm Seattle time I noticed that it was still light, though approaching sunset. I'm presuming that we are in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and another cruise ship is ahead of us toward the sunset.

At 10:45pm a powerful pilot boat came alongside us. Maybe that was the point of release of the local pilot.

I could see several ships to our port side closer to shore. It appeared to be freight shipping, and following a different route than ours.

I had been watching a cruise ship ahead of us, and we seemed to be following the same route, somewhat north of the Sun. Far out ahead, you can see another tiny image of a cruise ship.

One cruise ship is straight ahead of us, and the other can still be seen, but about halfway over toward the Sun.

It was a reverie to just watch the sea and the sunset.

I watched the last sliver of the Sun disappear, but no green flash.

After the Sun had set, it continued to illuminate the clouds. I was surprised to see the tiny image of the third ship in the little colored band where the Sun had set.

A colorful goodbye to this remarkable day. With at least three ships headed out toward the Inside Passage, it was time for me to head to bed. It was 11:10pm Seattle time.