position at 7:00 am: S23:06:59 latitude W162:24:04 longitude
(1650 miles NW of Auckland, New Zealand, our next port)
temperature: 76F and 97% humidity
distance since FLL: 10,059 miles
We started really rocking and rolling sometime in the middle of the night. It was dark when we awoke between 5 and 6am and it has been light with just the right timing for catching good sunrise pictures just after 6am. We did not really get a sunrise this morning because of the heavy, low cloud cover and rain. Debbie dressed for exercise and put a pair of pants and sweater over so she could go directly from Compass Rose and our Sunday morning make-up meal. Debbie had the Swedish pancakes (crepes) with black cherry jam and bacon and cappucino with a starter of raspberries. Clay had baby lamb chops with 2 eggs over easy and wheat toast with a croissant starter. Day 3 and NO CHOCOLATE CROISSANTS again! Is anyone else detecting a withholding pattern here? At 9am the captain makes his morning announcement and apologizes for the rough ride. He says that we are about 600 nautical miles from a developing L pressure/gale system that is moving in the opposite direction we are. We are traveling in a westerly direction and the gale system is traveling in an easterly direction.(Does that mean what Debbie fears it means? That we are on intersecting paths. It is not clear from the announcements.) High swells continue throughout the day and with a 20-25 mph head wind that is making the ship snap, crackle and pop and bob around somewhat.
This morning on Voyager Today on TV, Roger, the Tour Manager, complained that only 400 of the over 600 people invited had picked up their event tickets for Bay of Islands, NZ for this Sunday. Now, this announcement was made back in the 18th's Daily Passages, but it was not well explained. It did say if you were on a morning excursion that you did not have to do anything, that you would be taken to a shoreside luncheon and then bused to the Special Event at Waitangi Treaty House. So, we had done nothing. However, this morning, if you happened to catch it on TV, Roger explained exactly what will happen that day. It seems in the morning at 8am we will anchor in Russell and the tours will tender in, then independents can tender in. At noon, the last tender will return to the ship for independents. Then the ship will move. For 2 reasons, there is another cruise ship there that day and also there is a big nationwide holiday weekend going on and anyway, Voyager has to be out of the harbor. So, Roger's point was that if you did not have an Event Ticket allowing you to tender to and from the Special Event in Waitangi that you were not leaving the ship and if you did not get back on the ship in Russell, and did not have an Event ticket that you could not tender back. This is all way too complicated. It sounds like Roger is saying that if you do not do the ship's things that day that you can only be off the ship for a few hours in the morning only and then you have to stay on the ship the rest of the time, because if you don't have a Special Event Ticket they will not let you ride tenders in Waitangi. Can that be right? It seems way too complicated, but in fear, we went to the Tour Desk this morning after breakfast to make sure that we understood our own situation and that we were covered for the entire day ashore. Manuela did not look us up, but when Debbie told her we were doing the Countryside Drive, Manuela said yes we would be taken to lunch after the tour, then to the Event, then to the tenders and back to the ship and we did not have to do anything other than show up at our designated time and place with our tour tickets. Whew! PS. This afternoon we got door mail from the Tour Desk that informs us of changes in our tour. They are substituting Oromahoe for Kerikeri and there will be no visit to Moerewa now for Maori arts & crafts. The letter does still say that we will see a waterfall, sample cheese, visit the Hundertwasser Public Toilets in Kawakawa and visit the Kawiti Glowworm caves with 150-steps. So, since Debbie has always referred to this tour and cheese and glowworms with toilets it sounds as if it is still more or less complete. Now, it also includes lunch.
The ship is bouncing so much that Debbie skips her morning exercises to watch a DVD in our cabin. She also skips lunch. Clay went to lunch on the pool deck alone and just ate a hamburger and some cookies before coming back to the cabin. It was very rocky and windy up top and there were not many people there for the International BBQ. Tonight the ship plans to try again on a much more limited scale, the outdoor evening BBQ dinner. Tonight they plan a European BBQ from 6:30 to 8:30pm with 30-guest seating capacity and first-come, first-served. (The last one was also first-come, first-served but it was for the entire ship since all restaurants were closed except CR and it was scheduled to run an hour longer. Of course, since it got off to such a bad, slow start with the weather they kept it going until after midnight.) Right now the weather is looking less promising than the evening in Raiatea's weather, but good luck. The ship's safety officer called inquiring about how Clay was doing. Debbie told him she thought he was no better and maybe worse. Clay told him that at this rate, it was taking time to improve and it was not much better. Late in the afternoon Debbie finally said she needed something in her stomach and ordered a pizza and some ice. We shared the pizza and each had a Coke and Clay used the rest of the ice on his ankle.
At 10:30 tonight and tomorrow night, the lecturer/astrophysicist David Aguilar is taking people out to the front of the ship on deck 6. This is something and someplace that Debbie has wanted to do and see for a long time, but it does not seem that the weather will cooperate. He has also scheduled to repeat it tomorrow night (or in this case the 26th, since we will not have a 25th!). Originally, 2 nights were scheduled for accommodating the number people who might get to do it, but now it might be a weather thing instead. We will keep our fingers crossed for tomorrow night. Of all the nights, we have spent below the equator, and/or below the equator on ships, we have never gotten a look at the Southern Cross because of light pollution or weather or both. We were really hoping that with an astrophysicist onboard this sailing we would be able to do this. Keeping fingers crossed for the 26th.
Debbie stayed upright after her pizza, a good sign. She had not tried to return to her Relief Bands since early on in the first segment but she did get one on her left wrist after breakfast and before she went back to bed and so far so good. Of course, there were no problems before until she took them off and there was the skin reaction under there and she couldn't put them back on without causing too much pain to use them. Keeping fingers crossed on that too. Not looking like we will see calm seas for a long time now. Since Debbie was upright, we reviewed her research for Auckland and sketched out a plan for accommodating Clay's reduced walking ability. (We hope!) We also sent email to Lionzone requesting a brewery tour in the afternoon. We will wait to hear back and then re-evaluate the plans accordingly. There is obviously more to do in Auckland than could be done ina single day anyway, so we have lots of options. Roger, the Tour Manager, said on his TV show for Auckland that we would be there on a big, long, national holiday and could expect things to close at odd times, be extremely crowded or just not available at all depending. He said it is the end of summer, last weekend kids are out of school blow-out and Auckland has a great long weekend celebration of it. So, still not really sure what to expect and we will have to be prepared to change our plans accordingly once we arrive anyway.
Tonight is Informal. We will try for CR tonight as they have Hungarian Goulash on the menu.
Tonight is the night where we will make the time adjustment for crossing the International Date Line. The ship's clocks will be moved ahead 23 hours at 23:00 this evening. This essentially means we are skipping Jan 25. On the Voyager Today
show, Jamie apologized to anyone who would be missing a birthday or anniversary. We have never passed the International Date Line before. Frankly, if the ride tomorrow is as rough as today we will be happy to skip it!
Got a phone call about 6:15pm from Ursula, the Guest Relations Manger, who has been handling our IPS problem since Ft. Lauderdale on Dec. 28th. She told Clay that her contact at IPS had mailed a settlement check to our home and it would be waiting there for us in May went we get back. OK. Clay told her, great news and bye. He did not ask her what the amount of the check was or what would happen if we actually never see the check 3 months from now. We did not ever submit an actual claim form and did not ever respond to what the actual value of our losses were after all of our port day replacement shopping trips. Oh, well. Clay said he couldn't take it. If there is no check, fine. If there is an inadequate check, fine. He can't take it anymore. Anyway, that is the update on the whole luggage pilfering situation.
Debbie did eat the Hungarian Goulash in Compass Rose and it was better than the goulash she had at Wolfgang Puck's. Clay had calf's liver and it was tasty as well and a change from the food he has been eating.
Sorry, no pictures to post today.
