We awake early, and discuss our options, but in the end decide to tie our destiny to the manufacturer's engineers and stay with the ship till the bitter end. What the heck? We’re pretty convinced the Captain won’t sail this puppy across the Tasman if he’s not 100% confident in his propulsion system.
We turn in our passports, head to the gym, then up to Moderno for breakfast. We end up sitting next to the sweet Israeli couple we chatted with the other day waiting for the computer. They are leaving today – flying to Bangkok to spend a few days before heading on home. Their original plan was to get off in Auckland at the end of the cruise and fly home through Bangkok anyway – so why wait? This way they can spend time in Thailand before heading home on their originally scheduled flight. Might as well.
As we are chatting, Joseph, our butler comes up. He’s been searching for us all over, looking for our passports because he knows we hadn’t turned them in yet. We show him our receipt and apologize for not letting him know – I had actually thought about calling him, but it was early when we went down to guest services, and I hate to bother him anyway. (Which leads to Joseph getting annoyed with us and the next day telling us in no uncertain terms “I am your Butler!” in reference to the fact that we went to guest services for something – and we should have just come to him. He is so funny. We’ve never been chastised by a butler before! But now I tell him everything so he’s not upset. 
)
So back to the ship. Do we sail? Yes, eventually, we do. The Captain finally makes an announcement and explains that we have the Australian authorities aboard, and they will also determine if we are sea-worthy and able to sail. We originally thought we’d sail around 2 – but the Captain has given the engineers extra time to make absolutely certain we are good to go. We eventually drop our lines around 4:15p and head out into the harbor.
Here’s the prettiest sight we’ve seen: 2 wakes from 2 azipods.
We can only hope we see this all the way across the Tasman! We happily stay up on deck, watching Melbourne fade into the distance as we finally sail away.
The Captain conducts some sea trials, pushing the azipods up to 75% capacity, then shutting them down completely and dropping anchor about 7:30, so they can actually go down and physically check the azipods. All is apparently well, and we set sail again a little after 9pm.
Exhausting all this drama and excitement! But we’re on our way to Auckland at last.
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