Crossing the Atlantic
When we boarded the ship, Stephanie was almost overcome with emotion. She said it felt like she “was home”. And not because we were on our way home—because she was back “on a boat”. There were a few subtle differences from our experience on the Cap Cleveland, but for the most part our ten days on the Hanjin Palermo felt very familiar and passed comfortably.
Traveling with us were four other passengers. Three men had boarded a few days before us in Germany. Two were German, one of whom had always dreamed of arriving in America by boat. The third was a British-born Swiss man who bore a striking resemblance to my Scottish-born grandfather. Finally there was a man from Paris who boarded with us in Le Havre, and eagerly awaited news of the birth of his grand-daughter.
Otherwise we had a welcoming, affable German captain, a spacious two-room cabin with five portholes, and calm, almost placid seas the entire way from Le Havre to New York. Amazingly the ship had two pools, one on-deck just outside our cabin, and one indoors, below-deck, but since they had no way to heat the frigid Atlantic waters, both were empty. We ended up spending less time on the bridge and more at the bow—where we saw a surprising amount of wildlife in the middle of the ocean: migrating seabirds, playful dolphins, spouting whales, and even a shark!
Saturday, August 13
Sunday, August 14
Monday, August 15
Tuesday, August 16
Wednesday, August 17
Thursday, August 18
Friday, August 19
Saturday, August 20
Sunday, August 21
Welcome back to the good ole U.S. of A!
Hi Justin, I’ve checked in to your blog quite a few times over the past year to see how your great adventure was going and it was always a joy to read about some of the places that you’d been and to see the great images that you captured along the way. I can’t believe that it has been a year. I am sure that it is even more unbelievable for you. These final photos are particularly beautiful and poignantly echo some of the photos that I remember from the beginning of your travels. I have been particularly interesting to see your experience travelling across the oceans on these monster ships. It is some thing I would love to do myself someday mainly for me because my father was in the merchant navy when he was in his 20’s and I grew up listening to many stories of voyages across oceans on giant ships.
Anyway I wish you both a very safe voyage home.
Great photos and I love the one of you two on deck – you both look so content. Glad to hear that the long boat back was as fulfilling as the one you took to start out the trip and very happy to have crossed paths with the both of you in Chiang Mai!
Been following your adventures and have quite enjoyed getting to vicariously travel the world.
I saw a post on Design Milk today that I thought you would be interested in: http://design-milk.com/ship-toys-from-papa-foxtrot/#more-80039. Beautiful wooden toy ships.
Welcome back to Texas – and a heat wave. I guess it beats a hurricane in NYC.
Patrick, hard to believe we’ve been out of the country for a year. It’s good and strange to be back.
Enda, I highly highly recommend it if you get the chance. Several of the passengers were making a vacation out of the journey, and flying right back to their respective homes in Europe after only 2-3 days in NYC. Glad you’ve enjoyed following along.
Jodi, it’s funny, Stephanie looks at that photo and says “we look so old!” I think it’s the light and the windblown hair. But we were quite happy to be back onboard, and now we are looking forward to the as yet unknown adventures that await us.
Jacob, thanks for reading—and wow! I must order the Emma Maersk. Except it doesn’t yet seem to be available from http://papafoxtrot.com/
Welcome home guys. If the sea calls again you know where to find us. the Hanjin Palermo is running fully booked right now so we could use a few more like her on the Atlantic run!
Kevin, thanks for connecting us with such a great ship. I can say there’s a high probability we’ll consider traveling the high seas again one day.
fascinating… i am thinking of taking Utrillo from USA to UK in October. Am concerned about foul weather, it being hurricane season! Glad you missed Irene…. can you tell me how you were able to post your blog on the voyage? is there web access on board? thanks for any info.
Nina, I posted this the day we arrived in NYC, not on the ship.
During our Pacific crossing (on the Cap Cleveland), there was no internet aboard (technically you could give the captain a Word document and have him send an email for you from the bridge, but I don’t consider that “the internet”). However we did bring a rented satellite modem along and left daily updates from the middle of the ocean. The posts start at Boarding the Cap Cleveland and continue from there.
During our Atlantic crossing on the Hanjin Palermo, there was a computer available for the crew that they could use to compose emails. I believe these went to the captain who was responsible for sending them out. So it was a better system if you needed to contact someone in a pinch, but we didn’t have any use for it.