Crusin' to Pago Pago - February 10 - 11, 2012

QE Bronze from QE2

As we start our fourth cruise week, we are amazed how settled we are with our new life.  The ship steamed from Oahu and past Hawaii’s Big Island.  The course is south southwest across the Pacific Ocean.  We pass a group of islands called the Line Islands which include Kingman Reef.  This island was used as an overnight stop for Pan American Airlines Flying Boats in, 1935 enroute from the USA to New Zealand.  A supply ship known as the North Wind was stationed there to supply fuel for the planes and meals and lodging for the guests.  I have to mention that the island of Kiribati, AKA Christmas Island, is in this group of islands.  Jimmy Buffet, eat your heart out.

Every morning Steve heads up for coffee before me.  His comment to me this morning when I arrive is “The absence of music is far better than Kenny G at sunrise.”  Generally, there are the same early risers, every day, at breakfast in the Lido Grill. Two people up early for breakfast that are worth mentioning:  an evangelizing Christian woman, there in her robe, carrying a big bag of ‘stuff’ around and who sits down with various people; an older gentleman who looks like the actor who played the teacher in the original Karate Kid movies.  Everyone else looks as strange and blurry-eyed-early-morning as us.

The tradewinds helped sailboats in days of old sail around the world.  Above the equator (that imaginary circle mid-point around the Earth), the tradewinds travel in a northeasterly direction and below the equator in a southwesterly direction.  Around the equator are the doldrums – no winds.  We will be crossing the equator on February 12 at 2:30 pm.  There is some kind of ceremony at the time; we’re hoping that it doesn’t entail walking the plank, given that the deck is nine stories above the water line.

The daily lectures have included information about our upcoming ports in New Zealand.  Everything sounds interesting.  Other topics presented– “Loss of the Russian Submarine Kursk,”  “American Explorers and Whalers in the American Polynesia” and “The End of Airships.”  Never too old to learn or in some cases be refreshed on a topic.  Did you know that Melville wrote Moby Dick based a legendary whale called Mocha Dick that avoided capture for 30 years in the Polynesian islands?  Nor did I know that Robert Louis Stevenson died in Samoa.

We haven’t written much about the food onboard.  The dinners are special every night – four courses of a variety of foods prepared in multitudinous ways.  Everything from American to Indian to Mexican to Japanese interspersed with general ‘continental’ cuisine.  All food, which we don’t have to cook, is served with silver and on fine china, which we don’t have to polish or wash.  Overheard of a British woman today…..”I didn’t realize there was more to life than grocery shopping and cooking.”  How you gonna keep’m down on the farm…..?

Cruise Musing:  Global warming vs. the expanse of the Earth and sea – one ponders how the little thing called man could have any effect at all, much less alter Earth’s temperature and future¸ given the absolute size of this earthly creation.  And one ponders why anyone would want to.

Side note:  We are writing in a paper journal (thank you Elsa & Rod) as well as an online journal in hopes that any distant progeny will know of our travels at this time on this planet.

We turn the clocks back again tonight so it is already February 12^th in Florida.  As I finish this blog entry, just want to say Happy Birthday, Geoff!