Squeekie watches a sunrise over the Pacific Ocean; Moss 2009-01-27-0938

Squeek and Moss with Executive Chef Bernie Rius; SqC 2009-01-27-1711


Squeek and Moss at the “Golden Line,” where the International Date Line crosses the Equator (0N 180W); Moss 2009-01-31-1014



Into the South Pacific


Day Eight (Monday, January 26, 2009)-- We left the Hawaiian Islands just after sunset on Sunday, January 25th, and now we are headed in a southwesterly direction toward the South Pacific. We will see no land for the next nine days. Today, Monday, is a lazy day—after two busy days in Hawaii we are enjoying a day of nothing. Squeekie began her journaling, and I finished the two days of blog text that tell of our activities in Hawaii. Now it is get ready for dinner. At this day’s end Squeekie and I have been aboard the Rotterdam for one week.

Day Nine (Tuesday, January 27, 2009)-- We are two hundred plus nautical miles south of Johnston Island, an atoll controlled by the United States that is considered to be one of the most remote places in the world. Everywhere one looks there is sea; fortunately it is relatively calm. Today we enjoyed a tour of the galley aboard the Rotterdam. It was the best tour Squeekie and I have ever experienced aboard a Holland-America ship. The visitors were subdivided into small groups and the staff (mainly the second maitre‘ds) told us what each section did, while staff people demonstrated functions, the dishwashing section displayed examples of all types of silverware, glassware, china, and containers used by the various meal sections, and the tour concluded with a display of folded napkins. While having lunch in the Lido, Squeekie had a chat with Captain Olav. At dinnertime, the Captain came over to our table to chat and Squeekie was as giggly as a young girl—it must have been the champagne cocktail she had just before dinner.

Day Ten (Wednesday, January 28, 2009)-- Today we are in the Central Pacific Basin over 1,000 miles southwest of Honolulu. My trivia team tied to win today, but lost the tie-breaking question. Doggone it! The major activity today has been to learn why the pictures I have put with the Blog text have not been sent. I have created Word files for each blog day I wrote, and added pictures to them—some of you may have noticed picture captions merged into the text of Blog 004—but the Blogspot website would not transfer the pictures into the blog from the Word file. Yes, I learned about downsizing the pictures to make them easier to move, but that still didn’t work. After talking with the Internet manager aboard the Rotterdam—a very nice British lady named Kelly—we found that Blogspot has a very archaic way to move pictures into text which uses vast amounts of Internet time, which is costing Squeekie and myself 25 cents per minute. So I have decided that from this point on in the blog we will keep the pictures down to one or two per “blog-day” and that those of you who are reading this (if there is anyone out there) will just have to wait until our return to see the many pictures we are taking (so far it is about 100 a day—isn’t digital photography wonderful!). Note to my computer genius Brother Rob-- is there any way I can overcome this problem without adding greatly to my Internet minutes?

Day Eleven (Thursday, January 29, 2009)-- At 1 o’clock this afternoon Captain Olav told the ship that we were at 4 degrees north latitude and 149 degrees west longitude—now very close to the Equator. The Rotterdam has traveled southwesterly at a steady 16 knots since leaving Honolulu Sunday night, running across a wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean hundreds of miles from even the most miniscule speck of land. Seeing nothing but water in every direction got me to thinking about earlier humans who came this way. First were the ancestors of the Hawaiians, Polynesians who sailed northeast from Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands with no navigational aids other than stars, ocean currents, and birds. I can only wonder how many of the ancients sailed into obscurity or death before some successfully made it to Hawaii aboard their primitive canoe-rafts. Then there were the early European sailors, out to discover the world but being uncertain of how wide was the Pacific. I have read accounts of the Spanish “Manila Galleons” telling of the deaths of many sailors in the crossing from Acapulco to Manila and return. In addition, log and journal accounts of the voyages of Magellan and Drake show that navigation aids did not necessarily help the sailors in their crossing of the wide Pacific—there were always the dietary concerns of scurvy and fears of encountering unfriendly natives to make a Pacific voyage dangerous. Yet still they did it! Polynesians and Europeans who had the bravery to do this are to be commended. In contrast, our crossing from Northeast to Southwest aboard the luxurious Rotterdam seems easy in the extreme, despite complaints from some pampered guests about the swell or the absence of some types of foods after a week at sea. . . .

Day Twelve (Friday, January 30, 2009 / Saturday, January 31, 2009)-- Today was the big day on this leg of our circumnavigation, two days crammed into one! Just before noon today Captain Olav announced our crossing of what sailors call the “Golden Line,” that is, the Equator and the International Date Line at their point of intersection in the Pacific Ocean. Squeekie and I went out on the forward deck on Deck Six and took pictures of ourselves (and Suzie), and of the ocean at this place. At exactly twelve o’clock noon, the ship’s whistle blew to mark our crossing of the two invisible lines—there were, of course, no markers of any kind to denote our crossing. Still, it was fun to be standing there one moment at 11:59am on Friday January 30th, and the next moment in Saturday, January 31st. One moment we were in “today,” and the next we had traveled to “tomorrow.” We enjoyed some “Naughty Golden Line Cocktails” to mark our passage. Very fortunately, Captain Olav had negotiated a deal with King Neptune not to examine the “polliwogs” who had never crossed the Equator before, but I think there will be a Court of Enquiry later in the voyage, as we will cross the Equator a total of four times.

Day Thirteen (Sunday, February 1, 2009)-- Happy Birthday to Ched, the only one of my siblings who has traveled into this area of the South Pacific where we are presently headed! We still have two more “at sea” days before we arrive at our next destination, and although the days have been relaxing for the most part, we are ready for some land activities. Today being Sunday, Squeekie did not spend time doing her Edison work, but instead camped out on the Lido deck by the back pool. I read and dozed while Squeek sunned. . . . I have learned about a railroad museum in Adelaide, and the Port Specialist aboard the Rotterdam is looking into my being able to go there in lieu of what we did plan to do. I am grateful that Squeekie is OK with this. The Port Consultant is also looking into the possibility of seeing steam trains in Mombasa while Squeekie is on her safari in the interior of Kenya. Today we did our first load of laundry in the self-service Laundromat on Deck Six. We also had our first example of the functioning of the international date line. Today is Super Bowl Sunday, but we will not see the live broadcast of the game until tomorrow, Monday, because of the time difference between the East coast of the States and out here in the Southwest Pacific. We concluded our lazy day with dinner in the Lido (no dressing up required) and crashed early.

Day Fourteen (Monday, February 2, 2009)-- Today is “Super Bowl Monday,” as well as our last full day at sea on our journey from Hawaii into the South Pacific. The Super Bowl is being played in the early evening of Sunday, February 1st in Tampa, Florida, this year, and the live broadcast of the game is picked up aboard the Rotterdam at 10 am on Monday, February 2nd because we are west of the International Date Line.

The event staff made a big event out of the game, always with the proviso that we were receiving a satellite broadcast that was subject to unanticipated interruptions. The Queen’s Lounge aboard the Rotterdam, which is the ship’s large live theatre, was extensively decorated for the event with all manner of signs, posters, and the various types of hangings that one sees in bars and restaurants which feature football broadcasts. The Culinary Department set up snack foods, including hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken nuggets, nachos and gallons of guacamole. The bar staff offered special cocktails, the “Cardinal Pride” and the “Steel Curtain,” and vast quantities of beer. They even offered all the beer one could drink (that is, unlimited refills) during the game for $30—after all they didn’t have to worry about sending drunk patrons away to drive home after the game! I settled into the lounge just as the satellite signal was being received from ESPN International (not the NBC signal that was broadcast at home), and watched the game unfold. Despite being a life-long Forty-Niners fan—something that I learned from Dad, but which I have found difficult to maintain in recent years—I found myself rooting for the Arizona Cardinals in this game—after all, a Westerner should support the team which represents the West, right? I participated in the trivia games, the quarterly score lottery, and other activities, and sadly watched the Cardinals piss away their opportunities during most of the game. I cheered as they roared ahead in the closing minutes of the game, but groaned as they lost in the last seconds. Three items in the trivia contest caught my attention: 1) in the last Super Bowl in 2008, Americans consumed 43 million pounds of avocados (used to make guacamole); 2) in the 2008 Super Bowl Americans purchased (and presumably consumed) 52 million CASES of beer; and 3) 30-second advertising spots in this year’s Super Bowl cost $3 million each!

After the game ended (so tragically for we Westerners), I went up to the Crows Nest on Deck Nine to join Squeekie. She has settled into this bar-with-a-view location as her office while she does Edison work on the “At Sea” days. It is quiet because few people use it in the daylight hours, She can plug in her computer, pick up the satellite signal, and do her work with almost no distraction—and the view is wonderful. She likes to say that her office is better than that of the Edison Chairman’s because her view changes every moment, while all he gets to look at is the Rio Hondo Golf Course. As the Rotterdam traveled along its course southwest toward the islands of Vanuatu, we passed through tropical squalls. I read and Squeekie worked.

At 5:45 local time, Captain Olav announced to all aboard the ship that the Rotterdam expected to sight the first of the islands in the Vanuatu chain at about 2 o’clock in the morning, and that we would sight the island of Espiritu Santo at around 7am. He also said that Luganville would not be a tender port, but that the ship would dock, probably at about 7:45 am.

I am writing the last paragraph of this week-long blog entry that covers the long journey of over 2500 nautical miles from Hawaii into the heart of the South Pacific. Now we are nearly there. Squeekie observed to me the other day that this nine-day “at sea” leg of our trip is almost as long as the longest cruise we had ever taken prior to this world cruise. I confess that although the ship-board activities have been interesting and relaxing, I am ready to see some land again.