Sea Days - Tahiti to New Zealand

Monday, January 30, 2023 

Sea Days between Tahiti and New Zealand 

Another long spell at sea. Temperatures are dropping slowly as we head southwest towards New Zealand. Tahiti was around 80 F. Today, we are around 70 F. Temperature fluctuation between high and low has been averaging around 2 degrees. Lots of cloud cover and seas range from fairly comfortable to a pretty good rock and roll. 

With the cloud cover, we’ve enjoyed some beautiful sunrises and sunsets.

 

 

We had signed up for the Behind the Scenes ship tour for Friday. The Hotel Manager was our guide for the tour. He is one of the top top officers and we really enjoyed what he had to share with us on how certain aspects of the ship functioned. Such as how much is controlled by Maritime law and the protections for staff. 

We started with the kitchens, which we had toured on other cruises with the head chef as our guide. So this wasn’t as in depth of the kitchen, but covered a number of other areas. Some of the storage areas, the garbage area, an area monitoring all sorts of systems on the ship (no photos), and the laundry. The washers and dryers are huge and they have a machine that will iron and fold the sheets. The sheet goes in as a single layer and comes out the other end folded neatly. I think it also folds towels. We should all have one of those, but it was bigger than our whole stateroom.

 

Washers

Dryers

Press and Fold

All folded and ready.

 

 

Friday also turned into a rather eventful day. We were all summoned to the Pool Deck for a 5:30 p.m. event. We are crossing the International Dateline. I’m not sure exactly what time we crossed, but we went from Friday to Sunday. Everyone was later presented with another certificate commemorating the event.

 

 

As this blog is in reality a record for us to have of our activities, I’m adding a few photos of art projects I participated in. Our instructor, unfortunately, is getting off in Auckland, so we had a showing of all the projects completed by her students while she was on board. These are my attempts. It was fun! 

A gift box

A shadow box

 

A watercolor of
Bora Bora

Weather in New Zealand isn’t looking good. Auckland has been pummeled with huge amounts of rain and flooding. Homes are being condemned and there has been some loss of life. The excursion team says that, for now, our excursions should not be impacted. 

Every day at 12:00 Noon, the captain comes on the PA system in the common areas and gives a report of where we are, our speed, ocean conditions, and the depth of the ocean (most of the time that we have been in the Pacific, the depth is around 15,000 feet, so “we have good keel clearance”). Today, the announcement was in all areas of the ship. The captain has been conferring with the harbor master in Bay of Islands and the weather tomorrow is expected to be fairly bad. It would be a tender port with the time between the ship and shore to be about 30 minutes. He has determined that it would not be safe for the tender operations so is cancelling our stop in Waitangi (Bay of Islands) and is headed straight for Auckland. 

We have been on board since December 22^nd. Auckland was to be our 15^th port on the original itinerary. Auckland will now be our 11^th port. 

     1 port (Nicaragua) was cancelled due to “political” concerns.
     2 ports (Santa Barbara, CA and Waitangi, NZ) were cancelled due to weather.
     1 port (Kauai) was cancelled due to a lack of guides and busses. 

But we got a 2^nd day in Honolulu and we’ll have an extra night in Auckland. The extra sea day between Los Angeles and Honolulu allowed the captain to swing south and avoid some of the effects of a large storm hitting California.