Smithy's Cruise Blog

After a relaxed day at sea, we arrived this morning in the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. When we awoke Queen Anne was already alongside her berth and these two vessels were docked nearby. There is a prize for the first reader to identify both of the vessels correctly..

I have not been as diligent as I should have been in writing my blog over the last 18 months. Blood tests and transfusions were not very exciting news.

But when I did start up again I made a mistake – a slip of the pen really – so the 2nd competition relates to an error that was pointed out to me by Stewart Wilson. He is not allowed to compete. We met Stewart and his late Wife Elizabeth many years ago, sitting at the Captains table on the Maiden voyage of Queen Elizabeth. By the way in the competition spelling mistakes and poor grammar do not count. It is a factual error you are trying to find!

That meeting is set out in the blog in November 2016 if you scroll back. But the mistake – the slip of the pen – was in the last 18 months . Answers and any other reactions, not on a postcard please, but in Comments.

But back to Santa Cruz. The sun shone and after a visit to the buffet for breakfast (everything you can imagine to eat, all freshly cooked in front of you – but noisy because it’s packed with passengers who have failed to get up early enough for a civilised breakfast in the restaurant and are rushing to feed themselves before they set off on their tour!).

We always have breakfast there because it’s impossible to get Jane up and showered and dressed before the restaurants close for breakfast. We use our restaurant for lunch if we are on the ship and always for dinner. The food is wonderful and the staff are very caring. Many of them remember us from as far back as the World Voyage on Queen Victoria in 2014. We bumped into Albert today in the street in Santa Cruz – 12 years since he was our waiter on QV!

Although we have been to Tenerife numerous times on holidays and to play golf over the years, we have always been in the south where the beaches and golf courses are to be found. So the city is mostly a walking tour and as it is on the side of a hill it is tiring. But we survived.

Tonight we set sail at 11.00pm for the short voyage to Gran Canaria where Jane and I spent our honeymoon in 1973.

After 3 days at sea we arrived in our first port – Funchal in Madeira. Day one was slightly drizzly in the afternoon, but we ventured off in a shuttle organised by the ship. No delay and a swift journey along the front. We then walked into town with Jane in the push wheelchair.

It’s a pretty town and we enjoyed the buzz of the place. Plenty of tourists but crowds of locals as well.

We had the usual coffee and then wandered back to the ship. We were overnight in Madeira and next day explored the ship. I had not seen much of it last year! Some of the layout has been criticised in social media and I can understand some of the moans. It is different and many of us don’t like change!

At about 3.00pm the Captain broadcast to passengers and crew to announce that a member of the crew was not well and needed to be airlifted by helicopter and taken ashore.

He told us to clear the decks and remain inside. He said that the helicopter would be arriving in about 15 minutes time. There was clearly a well prepared plan in place to deal with such incidents.

Shortly afterwards the helicopter could be seen and the operation was carried remarkably swiftly.

We were in our cabin at the time and no doubt we will hear from fellow passengers who were closer to the action.

Our daily programme today revealed that Steve Chaplin was speaking on flying F4 Phantom aircraft. Nick Brewer didn’t know him but his brother Tim (who we met in Singapore many years ago) did.

Today I’m not sure if we are in the B of B or the Atlantic. I missed the Captain’s mid day report, but no doubt Nick Brewer will be able to tell us!

The sea is rough but QA is coping well without too much movement. This morning at 11.00 Sir Alan Collins KCVO CMG spoke to a packed Royal Court Theatre on ‘What is the role of an Ambassador’. He spoke well and his talk was packed with photos and film clips of his career as an Ambassador at posts around the world, including New York, Singapore and the Philippines.

I’m beginning to get a feel for Queen Anne. 18 months ago I saw little of the ship and her layout. There has been plenty of criticism of her on social media since her launch, but others argue that Cunard needed to change to get away from the traditional standards that had made her ships famous.

I’m one of the older set and I still love the Queen Victoria, the Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary 2. Today I was frustrated by the fact there are no more lifts (elevators) on QA than there are on QV, yet there are many more passengers on the much larger Queen Anne. As a result we found that we were having to wait 20 minutes on one occasion today to move from deck 4 to deck 9 – OK I’m an old moaner!

I will mention more pros and cons as we go forward.

Tonight is a formal night. It will be interesting to see how many DJ’s and Black ties appear!

It’s been a busy few days getting ready, with Jane’s sister Sarah carrying out most of the clothes selection process and carers Sandra and Christine helping with the packing.

Kim arrived on Saturday evening and we all left No 41 at 10.30 on Sunday morning. Sandra drove Jane’s adapted car and Gary loaded up his large vehicle with Jane’s bathchair, push wheelchair and multiple cases. The Smiths travel simply.

The process boarding Queen Anne was swift, helped by the fact that passengers carry out most of the procedures at home on line in the days before the cruise begins.

But getting people aboard the ship early does mean that there is little for them to do. The crew are having to get the vessel shipshape after the last bunch have left. But it does give the newbies a chance to explore the ship. I fit into that category having only survived on the ship for 4 days in May last year.

We left Southampton at 4.30pm as the sun was setting.

During this voyage we visit Madeira and then Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and the La Coruna.

Jane and I had our honeymoon on Gran Canaria and then after the children arrived we had many Easter holidays in a hotel in the South of the island. We also holidayed in Tenerife many times and after Louise and Mike had left school, Jane and I had numerous golfing holidays in Tenerife.

We were in southern Tenerife in March 1987 when the worst ever airline tragedy occurred. The first we knew of it was when we went down for dinner and found there were very few waiters about. On hearing of the disaster they had all rushed up to the airport in the north to help. Nearly 600 people were killed in the crash which involved 2 airliners colliding.

The airport was closed thereafter and all holidaymakers had to be transferred to Gran Canaria fot their flight home from the airport there. We were packed into a small ferry for the trip from Tenerife to Gran Canaria.

The sea was very rough and I remember feeling sick. Jane suggested I stopped being pathetic and that I should sit on an outside deck.The fresh air would help she said as she sat sewing inside in the warmth. The son of a Cunard Captain, the chap who thought of himself as a reasonably successful dinghy sailor, banished to an outside seat for the 3 hour trip.. The shame of it!

On large ships, when the sea is rough, I still feel it, but Stugeron always does the trick and keeps it at bay.

I see that they are about to vote to elect a Mayor of the County of Lincolnshire.

Exactly 80 years ago my grandfather Alderman Charles William Hewson was Mayor of Grimsby, Lincolnshire. He thought that being Mayor of the thriving fishing port of Grimsby was a big enough job. Well I don’t actually know that that’s what he thought because I wasn’t born until July.

But I do know that by then Grandfather was enormously busy with 3 farms and a dairy, a butchers business, a ship chandlery in Immingham, a Postmastership and a haulage business with branches in Hull, Immingham, Middlesbrough and Grimsby Docks. He was a JP and was President elect of the National Federation of Meat Traders. After war broke out in 1939 he had become an advisor to the Minister of Foods on the distribution of meat nationally.

One of his secretaries had the job of keeping an album during his year as Mayor by cutting out from the local paper every article about him as Mayor.

I got a mention

Update

I’ve been a regular visitor at SGH since May 2024. A blood test every Thursday. Then every Friday a phone call from a doctor to tell me whether or not I needed a blood or platelet transfusion. It has usually meant a transfusion every 3 weeks and they took place on either Saturday or Sunday morning.

I was prescribed Ciclosporin which I take every day and that seems to be doing the trick and keeping my blood in reasonable shape.

There was a different and quite separate development some 6 weeks ago. It was a bladder cancer. Luckily it was caught early. Four weeks ago I had an operation under a general anaesthetic during which the growth, that shouldn’t have been in my bladder, was cut out.

It was all examined and analysed and today the consultant told me that no further treatment was required (apart from a check up that I will have every 3/4 months). So it’s a good news day.

We are looking forward to our next cruise on Queen Anne in early November 2025 and there will no doubt be much for me to report as we build up to that.

I have had a gentle prod about my failure to update progress on the health front. It’s not that exciting but I think we can say there has been some positive progress.

We are now moving to one blood test a week and probably transfusions only once every 4 or 5 weeks. The doctors ring me the day after the blood tests to go through the results. And I can find them all on My Medical Record.

I believe that it will still be some months before the doctors are able to say that the medication I am taking is doing its job.

I feel well. In fact, since I returned from Lisbon in mid May, I have not felt unwell at all. It’s clear that the treatment I am being given is the ‘old man’s treatment’. If I was 20 years younger there would be talk of transplants and more dramatic procedures.

Thank you for your good wishes.

On a different topic I would feel a whole lot better if Sir Ben Ainslie could start collecting a few wins.