Wednesday 27 August 2008. We sail into Santa Margherita in Italy where the Island Star moors in the bay. The ship will be using its tender boats to ferry passengers to and from the shore.
A typical south-facing Mediterranean resort looks across at us as we stand at the ship's rail before breakfast.
A ship at anchor swings very slowly along the points of the compass until the anchor chain tightens and the stress sends the ship swinging back the other way. This carries on all day, but is so slow that you would have to be watching out of the window or at the ship's rail with a fixed vertical on the ship as a sighting point to be able to notice.
We went for breakfast and then went to get off the ship and onto the tender. This is probably the bit that Mum was most apprehensive about but we knew from experience that the crew are used to dealing with nervous and elderly passengers and we had assured her that it would be no problem.
As indeed it wasn't. She was on the smaller boat in no time at all and was quite happy about it.
The other thing about being on a tender is that you realise, perhaps for the first time, just how big your ship is!
We weren't dashing off on any excursions so we weren't bothered about rushing off to catch a coach and let everybody else get off the tender boat first before we climbed the few steps and onto the quay in Santa Margherita. (The boat pictured was the one after ours.) We let the ship's photographers take our photo but didn't buy it when we went to look, as I turned out to have a huge flare spot in the middle of my face! Well, had I noticed it at the time, I'd have brushed it off...!
So here we are on foot and left to our own devices. Santa Margherita here we come!
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