sfred

Thanks @bluemarble for your reply. I just saw @exlondoner. 's post as my day is starting this morning. As indicated, the intention was to see what proportion of "seen" Cunard ports and cruise-bys are in countries that were part of the former British empire. I concur with @exlondoner's suggestion to include the wording "former" in the pie chart, and have done so. The text analytics model uses a Wikipedia list of former "Empire" countries, and consists of the following. If I've missed any, or included any that I shouldn't, please let me know.: UK, Ireland, Gibralter, Minorca, Malta, Cyprus, Canada, Bermuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Turks & Caicos Islands, Anguilla, St Kitts, Jamaica, Montserrat, Grenada, Antigua, Dominica, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, British Guiana, Belize, Pitcairn Island, Falkland Islands, Tristan de Cunha, St Helena, Ascension Island, Israel, Jordan,, Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Oman, Aden, Sudan, Gambia, Sierre Leone, Nigeria, South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, Dijoubti, India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Seychelles, Mauritius, Hong Kong, Brunei, Papua New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Nauru, Tonga, British Overseas Territories, Samoa For the US, in the first versions of the the model I included all of the US. I knew this was wrong, and eventually got around to adding a US State field to the model. The count of US ports in the Former Empire includes WA, OR, GA, SC, NC, VA, MD, PA, NJ, NY, CT, RI, MA, NH and ME. It excludes AK, HI, CA, TX, LA, AL, and FL because these states joined the US from origins other than the Empire. However, examining the model to confirm the details for this post, I discovered that the formula linkage to the list of US states had broken when I brought the model out of archive when we restarted this thread. The model was incorrectly counting all of the US again. I've fixed that bug, added the "Former" wording to the chart, and updated the list of ports to include @babs135 photo of Kingston Jamaica as port 579 (and a "Former Empire" port). A corrected pie chart is below.

I usually post these graphs when we reach a nice round number of "seen" ports/cruise-by's, but we recently sped past 575, and 600 seems a ways off. So here are the outputs from the analytics dataset I keep on the ports list. If anyone has any questions or requests for additional graphs, let me know.

Thanks @D&N. Bass Rock, Scotland UK. I'm afraid I don't know the ship. This is port/cruise-by number 578.

This is a guess... The one time Mrs sfred and I departed Hamburg on QM2 was way back in June 2015 (on the 175th anniversary westbound crossing). From memory it was dark by the time we passed Cuxhaven. So if the newer Cuxhaven webcam photo shows QM2 in the daylight, that implies she left Hamburg either late the night before and passed Cuxhaven in the morning of the following day, or departed Hamburg much earlier in the day in order to pass Cuxhaven before dark. From the position of the light in the webcam photo, I'll guess she departed Hamburg late at night. A recent time QM2 departed late at night was the Blue Festival on 20 August. If she passed Cuxhaven the following morning, that would be 21 August. (I might have these dates wrong - my CruiseCritic feed shows dates and times for Australia, which can be different from local dates in Germany).

Very nice webcam photo of QM2, @bluemarble. The webcam is on the Steubenhöft pier in Cuxhaven, Germany. downriver from Hamburg on the Elbe. The wording you blanked out is elb-link.de (or at least it was in the August 2019 google streetview). Parts of the original wording are still visible under the new placard, which I assume was Scandinavian Seaways. A search for "Scandinavian Seaways ferry pier" got me the start I needed to find this webcam.

Unless there are any alternative rulings, I'll count port/cruise-by number 577 as Kongsfjorden, Norway.

Thanks @babs135 for the Port Douglas photo. I've been wanting to go there for some time. Hopefully one day. Although still in Queensland, it is a 1,764km drive north from Brisbane, so not smething one can do in a day trip. Glad to hear you had a pleasant stay.

😄 !! Cunard does relax the bush walking dress code when in Australia.

Good catch, thanks @bluemarble. I've moved Fuerteventura from unseen to seen. Your count is a little off though - we are at 576 ports. Probably just a typo in your post. As an aside, QE is scheduled to be in Port Douglas later this year, on 21 November (Australia time). I had put a note in my diary to look for a bridgecam photo on that day, thinking that that was going to be the first time since the restart that a Cunard ship would be at an "unseen" port. Thankfully QV in Norway enabled an earlier renewal of this thread. Port Douglas was one of the few remaining Australia ports on the unseen list. I've never been there, despite wanting to go for some time. QE might have been a good opportunity, except that Mrs sfred and I are on QM2 on its Norway trip in November (and very eagerly looking forward to be back aboard, I must say.)

Thanks @D&N. Google maps is indecisive on whether to call the island Ile de Porquerolles or Îles d'Hyères. As I zoom in or out, the name of the island changes from one to the other. Whatever the name, the surrounding area looks like a wonderful place for bush walking. The views from the Pic de l'Ours, both in your photo and in google, are stunning. I definitely think this qualifies as port number 574 on our "seen" list, particularly as it's an original photo. Thanks for the excellent challenge!

Ah yes, got it now. Thanks! I did manage to get fairly close. As I've used my guess for the day, I'll wait for tomorrow. Others are most welcome in the meantime to use these hints to ID the port.

Looking back at @Solent Richard's original contribution of Le Lavandou in May 2021, apparently the town has a ferris wheel which isn't shown in @D&N's current photo. So my guess is likely wrong.

Le Lavandou, France, to the east of Marseille? There's some offshore islands (Ile du Levant) that have some similar shapes, and hills to the north where your photo may have been taken, althugh I cannot find an exact match to the village. Enough similarities to be worth a guess, though?

Hi @bluemarble. Can I get a "ruling on the field" for whether the two recent cruise-bys qualify as "seen" ports? Just wanting to update my dataset for the analytics model. Vågsøy, Norway (port 572) Bac Mor / Bac Beag island, Scotland UK (port 573) Thanks!

Oh no.... Cargo cranes. I think I lost about half my eyesight before trying to match cargo crane photos. 😎 Thankfully @ExArkie and @D&N may have saved my remaining sight. Much appreciated!

Thanks! I got lucky with a general google search for webcam beach promenades, and Valencia came up as one of the candidates. Google maps confirmed the cruise ship pier configuration seen from the webcam, and then street view confirmed some of the other details like the beach wall and public notice signboards. If I had "walked" just a little further north to the Plaja de Patacona I would have matched the other clues also. Now, which ship? https://www.cruisemapper.com/ports/valencia-port-678 has schedules going back to December 2021, but there have been no Cunard ship arrivals listed between December '21 and now. So it must have been before December. If I recall, QE did some Med itineraries after the UK-only voyages at the beginning of the restart. So I'll say QE? Also wasn't QV off on quarantine duty in the Caribbean around that time? So unlikely to have been QV in the webcam. One unfortunate outcome of the QV refit is that it is much tougher to distinguish QV and QE from a long distance away.

Could this be Valencia Spain on the Malvarrosa Beach promenade? There's some clue matches in Google streetview to the rows of palm trees, the public notice signboard with the wooden roof, and the shape of the low wall along the beachfront. Valencia also has a cruise ship pier roughly where the webcam photo shows the ships. However, google street view shows different types of street lamps from the webcam, and also a different textured footpath surface, so perhaps I have this wrong. I've "walked" along the promenade in street view but cannot find the precise location shown in the webcam. I also hoped to get a clue from the street sign on the lamppost, perhaps from the language or wording, but the resolution isn't enough to make out any words.

Thanks - it was really your success. I spent far too much time earlier today looking at likely places in left-drive countries, and then looking at roads and towns near Akureyri. Hopefully the Iceland ministry of transport never finds out that I initially thought the webcam image indicated left-driving. They'd justifiably never allow me to to hire a car there! 😃

Well spotted, @Host Hattie. I see now how I missed that one. Google street view doesn't cover the highway north of Isafjordur on the west side of the fjord, only route 61 on the east side. So I stopped looking. I should have been able to tell from the map outlines of land and sea, however. D'oh! It is always a lot clearer once you know what to look for.

I may have gone down the wrong rabbit hole with the idea of left-driving. I can't find a match. If @Host Hattieis correct about Iceland, then Akureyri and route 82 on the west side of the Eyjafjordur would be a likely candidate. The terrain is a rough match, but I can't find a specific location for the webcam.

I think it may be a country that drives on the left? The road is approaching a curve, and the centre markings are solid on the left (no overtaking) and dashed on the right (overtaking), so perhaps the road straightens out behind the camera. Also the overhead sign at the bend looks to be over the left side lane. I have a meeting to run to this morning, but will come back for further investigation later today.

I'm far from sure, but I'll try a guess of Isle of Mull, Scotland? There's some google maps photos of rocky beaches that might be a rough match to your photo.

Correct in all respects, well done @bluemarble.! Congratulations also to @Essiesmomand others who similarly connected the webcam photo from the Mekjarvik ferry car park to the posting by @2BACRUISERabout QV's port change. Although Mekjarvik is close to Stavanger, it is around 10km away and we do have precedent in the game for counting nearby distinct ports as separate entries. Some examples are Bayonne, Brooklyn, and Manhattan in NY/NJ, and also Hamilton, Royal Navy Dockyard, and St. George's in Bermuda. Of the 571 total ports identified so far in the game, 33 are in Norway, the third highest country behind only the US at 53 (of which 19 are in Alaska) and the UK at 44. Hopefully we will soon have port 572 from @Host Hattie's contribution.

At long last, we may have a new unseen port for our "Where in the World?" game. Here is a webcam briefly capturing a Cunard ship arriving this morning. I tried to get a bridgecam capture from the Cunard web site, but all three ships' bridgecams appear to be unavailable at the moment. It may be debateable whether this precisely qualifies as an unseen port. The port is nearby (although separate by around 10km) from an already seen Cunard port in the game. I'll welcome a ruling from our participants. I will provide the attribution source for the webcam once the port is successfully identified.

In Australia there's an email address you can write to with Worldclub account queries. loyalty@cunardline.com.au I've written to them before to verify our status and they've replied back the same day. I would think there would be a US equivalent. The Australia email address is found at the bottom of the Australia Worldclub benefit page: https://www.cunard.com/en-au/cunard-world-club The bottom of thie equivalent US page may have the US email address.