Cruising is FUN

As Ventura made her final approaches to the anchorage, the Captain rang "Standby Below" on the engines. Once in position, the order was given to let go the starboard anchor and commence lowering the boats. At 07.39 the anchor was "brought up" to seven shackles on deck. Once the boats were lowered to the water, pontoons rigged and SHore party established the passenger tendering was commenced.

Since departure Barcelona until our arrival in Villefrance, Ventura steamed a distance of 272 nautical miles at an average speed of 22.6 knots.

With all bridge and engine room departure checks underway, all tenders were safely hoisted and back onboard by 17.20. At 18.25 the order was given to start heaving the starboard anchor. The Officer in charge reported the anchor "aweigh" and the Captain manouvered the vessel to clear the bay. Once all boats were reported secure for sea and the anchor safely brought home, Ventura disembarked the local pilot and set various easterly courses throught the Ligurian sea towards Livorno.

Today we arrived in the pretty little fishing village of Villefrance, the ideal port for trips to Cannes, Nice and Monte Carlo.

Ventura anchored out into the bay and the mode of transport to the shore way by tender boat. Now being this was a maiden cruise and this was the first tender port, you could guess that there may be some teething problems?

Well you’d be right, we though it best to allow the people on booked excursions to get off first, then we wandered down a little later and go straight onto a tender – Little did we know at the time, but we were supposed to have gotten tender tickets from reception and waited our turn to be called – no one told us!!

Anyhow, we ended up on land and had a lovely walk along the narrow seafront where there were shops and restaurants. They even sent out a helicopter from MOnaco to have a look at the ship.

One street back from the front are the 14th Century catacomb streets, very picturesque.

Around lunchtime, we decided to head back to the ship.

On board our tender was a delegation from the local mayors office, who were having lunch with the Captain – very nice.

We spent some of the afternoon at the pool, but later on it clouded over so we adjourned to the pub instead.

That evening we saw the second of the Legends shows, this time it was Kylie Mynoge, Elton John, Robbie Williams and Freddie Mercury (although Freddy did look suspiciously like the George Michael we saw earlier in the week.

I would recommend this show every time, great fun.

Tomorrow is Livorna, the port for Pisa and Florence.