Starting a cruise to Hawaii- getting from the Yukon to the sea

Posted On October 13, 2023

We’re now on Day 8 of this trip, which features a 17-night cruise from Vancouver to Hawaii and back on Holland America’s Koningsdam. Often we book trips at least a year ahead but we just decided about 3 months ago to book this, after a lot of discussion about whether or not I’d be able to handle it.

I had planned on starting posts about this trip right away, but a series of technical problems delayed the start. With port days starting tomorrow, it’s hard to say what the actual schedule of posting will be, but I’ll try to stay fairly current.

The first photo shows you what our back yard looked like on Thursday, October 5th – a very good time to be packing to leave! 🙂

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At noon on Friday the 6th, we boarded Air North for the flight to Vancouver. Flights have become a big problem for me, but for some reason I slept through this entire flight, waking up at about 2:15 as we were on our descent, with the Sunshine Coast passing by.

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My view of YVR as we headed east to my old home town of Surrey where we turned to downwind and final.

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That put the Fraser River and New Westminster below me. There are some very impressive developments there, but much of the city seems little changed. The next two photos show “New West.”

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Richmond’s cranberry fields are really interesting at harvest time when the berries are floated off for gathering.

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The Westin Bayshore is one of our favourite hotels in Vancouver, and Cathy had booked a lovely 7th-floor room overlooking the harbour.

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That evening, we met a niece who lives not too far away and one of my brothers who happened to be in town, at Cardero’s restaurant next door to the hotel. Cathy went early to get a patio table which was somewhat quieter than inside. It was a wonderful get-together.

The next morning we watched the Koningsdam approach on one of the marine traffic sites, and at 06:40 I got the next photo of her pulling up to Canada Place to dock. What a spectacular start to our sailing day!

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Ship boarding can be chaotic at times, so we planned for a later arrival. The next photo was shot from our room just before noon as we were about to go down to catch a taxi.

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I shot the next photo at 12:23 as we got into the first line in the boarding process.

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Drop the bags, go through a few more lines for various checks…

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…and at 12:42 we were walking up to the ship to board. Cathy had seen a comment that boarding was a shitshow just after 10:00, but it was quick and simple for us.

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Looking down at Canada Place from our ship at 1:10.

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It was lovely to find on entering our cabin that there was a birthday greeting and mini cake for Cathy! 🙂

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That smile as we were about to depart put a big smile on my face, too. What a perfect birthday 🙂

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A medical emergency delayed our departure by an hour, but at 5:20 we were about to pass under the Lions Gate Bridge, surely one of the more spectacular cruise ship departures in the world.

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Passing by the freighters anchored in English Bay as they await docking positions.

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At 6:24, our first of many sunsets to be seen from our verandah – this one somewhere in the Salish Sea.

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Before heading out across the Pacific, we made a stop at Astoria, Oregon – I’ll tell you a bit about that in the next post.