Fred Olsen black watch from Belfast

Hi

I am considering Fred Olsens Blackwatch - Discovering Spain & France cruising from Belfast. Has anyone ever been on this before.i believe it is 2 full days T sea either side of 4 stop off days. Just wondering how the 2 full days cruising goes on a smallish boat.

Thanks

Rameriz

Never had a problem with 2 or 3 sea days.

There are usually plenty of interesting lectures or demonstrations to keep you entertained along with the usual bridge/arts & crafts/dance lessons etc.

Hi

 

I am considering Fred Olsens Blackwatch - Discovering Spain & France cruising from Belfast. Has anyone ever been on this before.i believe it is 2 full days T sea either side of 4 stop off days. Just wondering how the 2 full days cruising goes on a smallish boat.

 

Thanks

 

Rameriz

We've always found plenty to do on the sea days.

Hi

 

I am considering Fred Olsens Blackwatch - Discovering Spain & France cruising from Belfast. Has anyone ever been on this before.i believe it is 2 full days T sea either side of 4 stop off days. Just wondering how the 2 full days cruising goes on a smallish boat.

 

Thanks

 

Rameriz

We've just done Canada and back on Black Watch, four sea days each way. There were plenty of activities and lectures each day and they flew by.

We've just done Canada and back on Black Watch, four sea days each way. There were plenty of activities and lectures each day and they flew by.

How did the Canadian cruise go, hope all was well. Did you make all the ports and did it live up to expectations.

Will you be doing a review? I would love to read a bit about how it went as we may just do the short Canadian cruise that goes next Sept.

Cheers,

Barbara

How did the Canadian cruise go, hope all was well. Did you make all the ports and did it live up to expectations.

 

Will you be doing a review? I would love to read a bit about how it went as we may just do the short Canadian cruise that goes next Sept.

 

Cheers,

 

Barbara

Hi Barbara,

I'll try to do a review but no promises. The crossing was smoother than expected and we made all the ports of call as scheduled. We anchored just off Red Bay, so I could see that one being skipped if seas were rough. If you go there, take plenty of insect repellent; we were eaten alive by black flies and the bites are still visible/annoying two weeks later.

Also fog in Saint-Pierre disrupted one of the trips and the plan to use the ship's tenders as shuttles from the mooring to the town centre.

All the ports (except Red Bay) were great and I'd recommend the trip. We enjoyed looking round the towns on our own rather than doing any ship's tours. Even Red Bay could have been good; we skipped the whaling museum (the only thing to see there) because of the flies and went back to the ship early.

Hi Barbara,

 

I'll try to do a review but no promises. The crossing was smoother than expected and we made all the ports of call as scheduled. We anchored just off Red Bay, so I could see that one being skipped if seas were rough. If you go there, take plenty of insect repellent; we were eaten alive by black flies and the bites are still visible/annoying two weeks later.

 

Also fog in Saint-Pierre disrupted one of the trips and the plan to use the ship's tenders as shuttles from the mooring to the town centre.

 

All the ports (except Red Bay) were great and I'd recommend the trip. We enjoyed looking round the towns on our own rather than doing any ship's tours. Even Red Bay could have been good; we skipped the whaling museum (the only thing to see there) because of the flies and went back to the ship early.

Thanks, that is just the sort of information I was interested in. I had forgotten about Newfoundland and Blackflies (they are notorious) and did not realise the north was worse than elsewhere on the island. There were no biting insects around in St. John's or Corner Brook when we visited in June.

I see Fred has still got the complete circumnavigation of Newfoundland on the May itinerary for Boudicca, but IMO there is no way the ship will be able to go past the north of the island at that time of year. As I have posted previously, my brother (who lives in St. John's) had burst into laughter when I told him about that intention and said he had stood on the coast at the north of Newfoundland and watched the icebergs flow past at that time of year! There were a lot of icebergs in the area of sea we passed through in May/June. Sea ice and fog are very common problem in the eastern parts Canada in early summer becuse of the cold water of the Labrador current. It was foggy at times when we where there, but luckily neither that, nor the sea ice, affected any itineraries, so we were also very lucky in that respect.

Cheers and thanks again,

Barbara

We always take sheets of Bounce with us when we visit areas where there may be biting insects such as the Amazon or Thailand. Just wear a sheet in your top pocket or belt and the insects will stay well away because they dislike the odour. I should hasten to add that I'm not referring to the dog food. :rolleyes:

Barbara, It was just Red Bay that had the flies. Corner Brook and St John's were fine.

I get your point about the icebergs. When we left Red Bay the Captain said we would cruise north along the coast for a while and see if we could spot any. We'd imagined a few small ones or distant ones, but we saw some huge ones, and did a circuit of one in particular. There was also a large flat one with hundreds of birds sitting on it. We've never seen anything like them, and we went to Svalbard a couple of years ago.

I am also surprised you got near enough to see the icebergs. We did not see any icebergs, (partly because it was foggy when we were in the cold waters offshore), but apparently there is a good satellite system in that area which gives info on how many icebergs are in a particular area as a warning system. The Captain kept giving us an update on the situation and charts reflecting the ice situation were put on the board with the cruise chart and weather details. I think he was keen to give warnings in case we had to miss a port - we were lucky no to do so.

Greenland is a good place to see icebergs. From Narsarsuaq you can do a small boat excursion to go right among lots of big icebergs that were grounded in moraine at the exit of a fjord where there was a lot of them. The ones you saw by Red Bay may have been grounded, so they would not have been able to overturn, which would have been very dangerous of course.

Newfoundland and Cape Breton were completely surrounded by sea ice until only a couple of weeks before we arrived in Sydney on 31st May.

Barbara