A beautiful sunrise as we approached this port and the pilot had no wish to take the conn, as you know by now, this suited us admirably.  

We pass the Mitsubishi shipyard where a new-build cruise ship lies in the dock; this one is for one of the Carnival Group’s ships, for Aida Cruise Line, the “Aida Perla”.

 We wind our way through the channel and then under a bridge before docking. I have a busy day ahead of me and so I leave it to Karen to take some photos for you.

Our berth is the larger, green shaded area at the bottom

Samurai warrior??

 Nagasaki is, of course, one of the 2 cities which experienced a nuclear bomb during WW2.  We have on board some cadets, young and relatively inexperienced gentlemen who are still learning.  It is a habit of sailors to ‘put one over’ on these young cadets; (I remember being told to go and get a fog-lamp from the fog locker, which, of course doesn’t exist.  Nevertheless I searched fruitlessly for an hour, much to the mirth of all).

This time, our cadets were told that remnants of radiation still existed and, if they were to go ashore, they must wear protection, playing particular attention to their ‘more valuable’ parts.  The ship’s doctor was in on it and sent them an explanatory letter, sufficiently full of medical terms to make it look plausible.  The recommendation was that, if nothing else, one should wear as much underwear as possible, a minimum of 3 being sufficient.  Well, off they went, first having to be checked that they were adhering to the recommendations.  It was only after they returned that they realised that they had been duped.  🙂