Thursday 18th
Any avid readers will ask "where is Wednesday 17th." Simply, it did not exist, due to crossing the International Date Line. So all of a sudden, we are closer to the end of our journey, with all sea days due to not calling at Samoa. The weather this morning is overcast & showery with an increasing swell as we head towards Winston. I am slightly corrected, as we are actually heading south to try & avoid Winston, but I have noted that it is expected that the cyclone will soon start moving down towards NZ. I trust that we outrun it!
We went up to the Wintergarden for coffee and found out that the coffee up there was simply machine made, not barrista so went next door and did our own in the Lido! It was raining - very hard, with the water cascading down the stairs outside and the pool had waves flying up in the air. Someone actually went for a swim for a while. Three were plenty of leaks in the Wintergarden roof and staff were busy mopping up. When we had lunch later the MDR was really full as no one wanted to be upstairs with all the pitching & rolling!
The last formal tonight, but as I've mentioned before, having so many, so often spoils the event a bit. However it was a good evening with good food tonight and the country singer was excellent. Plenty of rocking & rolling still going on (& I am not talking about the dance floor! ). We are expecting to be south of Winston tomorrow, so hopefully we may get some more fine weather before Auckland. The temperature is 31 degrees, but muggy, so we are not venturing outside.
Friday 19th
A bit like yesterday, with big swells, rain and humidity. We are apparently some 400 mlles east of Winston, which is between Samoa & Fiji, but not far enough away to avoid the swells. Our midday report told of winds well over 200 kph, so quite happy to be on the outskirts.
At breakfast this morning they were not too certain whether there were bananas on board, so I assume that they'd planned to take fruit on board at Apia. Quite funny how many people we've spoken to are concerned about our fuel supplies. I don't think they understand the capacity and the fact that bunkering at Honolulu would give us more than enough to at least get to Sydney (if not further). Some people love to worry!
Pretty rough around dinner time tonight and they have cancelled the singers and dancers to tonight as it is too dangerous. In an act of faith, they've been rescheduled for tomorrow. I hope that they are right and that we continue to outrun Winston. We elected for an early night and we're rocked to sleep - not overly gently at times.
Saturday 20th
The sky is slowly breaking and the swells have reduced a bit, so it looks like they were right and we are getting away from the cyclone. More good news, tonight we finally put our clocks back to NZ time.
We went to an interesting lecture on the sea floor and ownership issues. It is likely to become even a bigger issue in the future, with the depletion of land based resources. After that we settled in to the lounge for coffee, which today was excellent, but that's the problem - no consistency.
The Captain has just done his midday announcement and clearly we are clear of the worst of Winston, but feel sorry for Tonga & Fiji bearing the brunt of it. He also announced the "good" news that we are now scheduled to arrive in Auckland at 6.00pm on Monday, rather than Tuesday morning. Not certain how that affects us, but assume our formal disembarkation will still be Tuesday morning. The good news though is that we should get to see home, as we sail through "the gap" on Monday afternoon! It is all coming to an end all too soon.
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