Napier fail

Our stop in Napier was scheduled for 12:00 pm today.  David and I planned on separate excursions again--he to ride the "Hawke's Bay Express" road train to explore the city and view the Art Deco architecture, I was going on a longer trip to a sheep station, then to the top of Te Mata Peak for the view of Hawke's Bay.

We knew the seas were rougher and the wind was whipping the water up off the surface.  We saw the empty cargo ship sitting out in the bay.

and the pilot boat coming toward us on choppy seas.

But we what we hadn't seen was the narrow passageway into the cargo port where we were scheduled to dock.

So we had not anticipated the captain's announcement, at 11:15 am.  He said that the winds were at 5 knots and expected to get stronger, so even if we could safely get into port, it would be even harder to get out at 5:30, consequently we would skip today's port of call and move onward to Wellington.  Our favorite waiter, Elvis, (from Albania), suggested that it's better to skip a port here or there than to risk mishap to the ship that might put the rest of the scheduled journey at jeopardy.  That brought to mind the experience we had in 2013 on our Viking cruise of the Sohn and Rohn rivers in France.  Early one morning our boat sideswiped another boat which was moored, then five minutes later, we hit the support of the bridge.  The repairs took two days.  Putting us even two days behind on this trip would be a scheduling nightmare that no one wants to face, so it's better to have an unexpected sea day than take the risk.  Ah well, we just waved as we sailed past.