Where in the world ?

[Host Hattie]

I think @North West Newbie could be right, St Thomas was a call on the Caribbean trips from both New York and Fort Lauderdale.

[Ray66]

5 hours ago, bluemarble said:

in 2004, 2005 and 2008. During those three years alone she managed to piled up 40 visits to that third-place port.

 

This has to be the biggest clue.  I have a website with the itineraries for those years and according to that the QM2 didn't visit St Thomas in 2004.

[North West Newbie]

9 minutes ago, Ray66 said:

 

This has to be the biggest clue.  I have a website with the itineraries for those years and according to that the QM2 didn't visit St Thomas in 2004.

 

I beg to differ; she called 12 times in 2004 as follows:-

 

Jan 24, Feb 9 & 13; Mar 14 & 24, May 15, June 16, Nov 13 & 23 and Dec 3 & 18 & 31.

[Ray66]

I din't realise that Charlotte Amelie was in St Thomas, which is what the website says for 2004. In the other years it's given as St. Thomas, USVI in 2005 and just St Thomas in 2008.

So that's the answer then.

[bluemarble]

OK, I'll go ahead and end it now. It's "tomorrow" now in the UK anyway. I'm gratified by the discussion my little question fostered. I hope you found it interesting and enjoyable.

 

@North West Newbie figured it out. QM2's third most visited port is indeed St Thomas, US Virgin Islands.

 

As @Host Hattie indicated, QM2 did a lot of cruises out of both Fort Lauderdale and New York to the Caribbean in her early years. During that time QM2 accumulated many calls to Caribbean ports, foremost among them St Thomas. And yes, @Ray66 unfortunately the itineraries like to confuse things by listing the town "Charlotte Amalie" sometimes and the island "St Thomas" other times.

 

Now I can't be certain how close my counts are to actual days in port since there have been alterations to Caribbean itineraries over the years. I know one call to St Thomas was canceled in November 2006 to repair a damaged azipod on QM2. But I understand a call to St Thomas had been added earlier in April 2006 to replace a call to Fort Lauderdale, so that should be a wash. There have also been disruptions to Caribbean itineraries because of hurricane damage that may have impacted the actual counts for several Caribbean islands including St Thomas.

 

That said, here are the counts I have for the top 25 ports QM2 has visited the most often based on available scheduled itineraries.
 

Rank	Port	Days
1	Southampton	291
2	New York	281
3	St Thomas	76
4	Hamburg	71
5	Barbados	60
6	St Kitts	58
7	Halifax	50
8	Fort Lauderdale	42
9	Boston	39
10	St Lucia	39
11	St Maarten	38
12	Quebec City	36
13	Lisbon	31
14	Tortola	27
15	Stavanger	27
16	Piraeus	26
17	Civitavecchia	24
18	Sydney (Australia)	24
19	Barcelona	23
20	Bergen	22
21	Hong Kong	22
22	Newport (Rhode Island)	22
23	Grenada	22
24	Zeebrugge	21
25	Dubai	20

Footnotes for other ports that were guessed

Madeira is in 34th place with 15 days.

Le Havre is in 35th place with 14 days.

Cherbourg is in 38th place with 13 days.

Rotterdam is in 70th place with 6 days.

QM2 has never called at Amsterdam. Apparently she's too large for the locks at IJmuiden for the North Sea Canal to Amsterdam.

 

Also, there is a reason I specifically mentioned I was not counting days spent in drydock/refit. If we count those days QM2 has spent at Blohm+Voss in Hamburg, then Hamburg would jump up to third place by a significant margin.

[bluemarble]

On 10/21/2020 at 5:30 PM, sogne said:

not sure if we have had this port

 

Once again it took much longer to identify this port than it should have, especially given that highly distinctive mountain profile in the background.

 

This is Heraklion, Greece with what my research tells me is Mount Juktas in the distance.

 

For some reason I was also having a lot of difficulty deciphering the name on that cargo ship. I now see that ship's name is "Haddad 1".  Guess where marinetraffic says her last now position was -- Heraklion, Greece.

[Host Hattie]

@bluemarble thanks for putting us out of our misery and the effort involved in compiling the list. Well done @North West Newbie for figuring it out !

 

[Kynance]

10 hours ago, Ray66 said:

 

 

But the QE has been to Funchal, Madeira.

Doh! Yes she has - and with me on it! I should have read Bluemarble’s clues more carefully. 🙄😊

[bluemarble]

If you're up for it, how about another most visited port trivia question, this time about QV? Of course Southampton is the port QV has visited most often by a large margin. What port has QV visited the second most often?

 

I promise there's nothing too tricky about this one (compared to the last QM2 question at least). Just keep in mind I'm counting the total number of days QV was scheduled to spend in each port beginning with her maiden voyage on December 11, 2007 through the end of her 2020 world voyage on March 26-27, 2020, not counting drydock/refit days.

 

Once again, go ahead and post your answer even if it's the same as someone else's. I'll plan on waiting at least 24 hours before commenting further to give everyone who would like to time to answer.

Edited October 23, 2020 by bluemarble

[exlondoner]

9 minutes ago, bluemarble said:

If you're up for it, how about another most visited port trivia question, this time about QV? Of course Southampton is the port QV has visited most often by a large margin. What port has QV visited the second most often?

 

I promise there's nothing too tricky about this one (compared to the last QM2 question at least). Just keep in mind I'm counting the total number of days QV has spent in each port beginning with her maiden voyage on December 11, 2007 through the end of her 2020 world voyage on March 26-27, 2020, not counting drydock/refit days.

 

Once again, go ahead and post your answer even if it's the same as someone else's. I'll plan on waiting at least 24 hours before commenting further to give everyone who would like to time to answer.

 

What about St. Petersburg, with all those Baltic overnights?

[Host Hattie]

Is it one of the ports already suggested for QM2's 3rd most visited ?

[bluemarble]

31 minutes ago, Host Hattie said:

Is it one of the ports already suggested for QM2's 3rd most visited ?

 

OK, I'll offer the hint that QV's second most visited port is not one of the ports that was suggested for QM2's third most visited port.

[Host Hattie]

Thanks, there were a lot of Mediterranean cruises some years so it could be one of the turnaround ports. Venice as they were often an overnight ?

[Ray66]

After a little bit of research, I'm going to say Venice too.

[sfred]

Civitavecchia?  QV sometimes would alternate between eastern med and western med voyages, with Civitavecchia in between the two.

[Ray66]

[bluemarble]

2 hours ago, Ray66 said:

 

This port would be Gibraltar. The photo was taken at Europa Point on the southern tip of Gibraltar.

Edited October 24, 2020 by bluemarble

[Ray66]

Correct.

On the subject of Gibraltar, I thought the following plaque in the Trafalgar Cemetery there may be of interest.

 

[carlmm]

A port we did not have so far (according to the search function).

[carlmm]

A new port visited with another ship.

Edited October 24, 2020 by carlmm

[bluemarble]

12 hours ago, bluemarble said:

If you're up for it, how about another most visited port trivia question, this time about QV? Of course Southampton is the port QV has visited most often by a large margin. What port has QV visited the second most often?

 

I promise there's nothing too tricky about this one (compared to the last QM2 question at least). Just keep in mind I'm counting the total number of days QV was scheduled to spend in each port beginning with her maiden voyage on December 11, 2007 through the end of her 2020 world voyage on March 26-27, 2020, not counting drydock/refit days.

 

Once again, go ahead and post your answer even if it's the same as someone else's. I'll plan on waiting at least 24 hours before commenting further to give everyone who would like to time to answer.

 

Well done for the astute observations regarding my question about QV's second most visited port.

 

@exlondoner picked up on the point that knowing which ports have involved overnight stays is relevant here. If I had asked about the number of separate visits (where consecutive days in port count as just one visit) rather than total days in port, the answer would be different. More about that in a bit.

 

The second most visited port for QV is not St Petersburg, but kudos to @exlondoner for coming up with the correct answer if the question had asked about QE instead of QV. St Petersburg is the second most visited port for QE with all of her overnight stays there.

 

As @Host Hattie correctly surmised, since QV has spent several seasons in the Mediterranean, the answer for QV is a Mediterranean port.

 

As my question reads "days QV was scheduled to spend in each port", the answer is Venice, based on a count of 72 scheduled days for QV in Venice that I've come up with. Well deserved points go to @Host Hattie and @Ray66 for providing Venice as their answers.

 

I had originally worded the question "days QV has spent in each port" before I edited it a few minutes later. Using that alternative wording, a second answer comes into play. The count I have for QV at Civitavecchia is 69 scheduled days, only three days less than Venice at 72 days. We know from an earlier discussion on this thread about @ExArkie's photo of Trieste that QV had to replace a scheduled three-day call to Venice in November 2011 with Trieste instead.

 

Now I don't know if there have been any other schedule changes for QV involving either Venice or Civitavecchia. If there have been none, then Civitavecchia would tie with Venice as QV's second most visited port with 69 days actually spent there. So I'll be happy to also acknowledge @sfred for coming up with Civitavecchia as another potential answer.

 

Also, Civitavecchia would be the clear winner if the question had asked about separate visits as opposed to total days in port. None of QV's scheduled calls at Civitavecchia were overnight stays while many of the calls at Venice were.

[bluemarble]

6 hours ago, carlmm said:

A port we did not have so far (according to the search function).

 

I'm getting a match to Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo, Mexico for this one. More specifically, this looks like a view of Caronia in Zihuatanejo Bay.

[bluemarble]

We've had posts in this thread about the most northerly place that a Cunard cruise has visited (Magdalenefjorden, Spitsbergen, Svalbard) as well as the most southerly (Cape Horn, Chile). To continue that discussion, I'd like to ask what is the port closest to the equator that a Cunard cruise has visited?

 

I'm not sure I know the answer, but I have a candidate in mind. What do you think the answer is? To clarify the discussion, I'm looking for a call where passengers are able go ashore, not just a "cruise-by" call. Naturally any cruise that crosses the equator at some point could be considered to have "cruised by" the equator.

[sfred]

3 hours ago, bluemarble said:

We've had posts in this thread about the most northerly place that a Cunard cruise has visited (Magdalenefjorden, Spitsbergen, Svalbard) as well as the most southerly (Cape Horn, Chile). To continue that discussion, I'd like to ask what is the port closest to the equator that a Cunard cruise has visited?

 

 

Singapore?  1.3521° N

 

Great series of trivia questions @bluemarble !  Much appreciated for your interesting teasers and research.

[sfred]

Sorry, is it too late to change my guess? Please amend it to Manta Ecuador.  0.9677° S