SAD. SAD. SAD!! - Shipspotting.

I have always felt that the uniquely?? British hobby of trainspotting was a bit sad - apologies to those who do it - but I can't get too excited about trains, especially when taken to the point of watching them and recording what you have watched. But to each their own, I suppose.

But here I am - equally sad - waiting waiting waiting for the 6 November 2010 to roll around (my mother always told me that I shouldn't wish my life away) - and what am I doing ?? Ship spotting! Perhaps it's a little bit different - in that I can say that it is all part of the excitement and buildup to our big cruises that lay ahead of us. But also perhaps others will still stay it's still sad!

But for those who would like to do a bit of ship spotting (of course in a non-sad way - that is, as a buildup to your next exciting cruise to some far flung exotic destination - which makes it all far more understandable than trainspotting), this is how you can do it. Go to this website and type in a search for the vessel of your dreams. It is all reasonably self evident how to use it. The ships have to be in range of a certain kind of radio receiver to be able to do this - there is no point in looking for a ship that you know is somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.  So, depending on where the ship is, you may or may not be able to play this little game a bit further. I knew that P&O's Oriana was approaching Lisbon - a port we will be visiting - so I was interested to watch her come in. The aforesaid website yielded this picture

Most of these cruiseships have a webcam on them - pointing usually in their forward direction - so a bit of "Googling" will find it for you. These webcams are a bit "hit and miss". Some cruiselines do it good and others do it bad. Like a lot of Corporations - some really understand the Internet and what is involved/required - while some just do a token gesture. So the pictures you can get from these webcams will vary in quality - some make you feel like you are really there - while others are not much more than a fuzzy image. This is where shipspotting can become sad. In this particular case of tracking Oriana, this is a screenshot of her berthing in Lisbon. She has just arrived from a few days in the Atlantic between Gibraltor and Portugal - so it seems like she has salt spray on her webcam lens.

I am quite pleased that I did this little exercise over the past hour or so - because it has made me realise that I was mistaken about where Oriana will dock in Lisbon. I thought it was going to be at the berths just east of the big bridge - which wasn't a real good place to walk into the city from. But now I can see that it is well east of this - and at a place where it should be quite convenient to walk into the old town after we get back to the ship from a morning shore tour.

So - when all is said and done, shipspotting isn't sad at all - and is really quite a smart thing to do.