CAROL IS TUNED IN TO THE MUSIC OF CRUISING

Professional musician, Carol Johns

The fine tuning of P&O Cruises Australia’s flagship Pacific Explorer extends to also fine tuning the ship’s five beautiful pianos. 

 

After more than two years of not sounding a note, the onboard pianos needed some special tender loving care from piano tuner Carol Johns. 

 

A professional musician, Carol has a good ear for the music of cruising and so it was for her a labour of love to strike the right note with Pacific Explorer’s pianos. 

 

According to Carol, it takes about two hours to tune a piano properly and she also acknowledged that two years of no playing had taken a toll on Pacific Explorer’s five. 

“After nearly two and a half years, they’ve got themselves to under concert pitch so you have to lift them back up to get them in tune,” Carol said. 

 

“That happens with any piano but it’s exaggerated because of the time and being on a ship is a tough time for a piano. 

“It takes about two hours to tune a piano if you want to make it really beautiful because there are about 88 notes but there are more than 220 strings and they’ve all got to be tuned, some of them more than once.”

During normal operations, piano tuners made regular “ship calls” to P&O Cruises ships but that was impossible during the pause when the fleet was far from their Australian home.

After being carefully tuned by Carol, the pianos will be glad to be home as well.