February 6th, 7th & 8th

Tuesday 6th February. A lazy day at sea after our hectic two days in San Francisco. 1800 new passengers embarked with 450 world cruisers remaining onboard so there will be a lot of new faces to get accustomed to, including some crew. Alan began the day by attending two lectures “In the Path of Captain Cook” with Geoffrey Blainey, followed by “Our Home Planet” with Colonel Walter Cunningham who was one of the astronauts on Apollo 7. I did the obvious and went to the laundry before blogging! We now have a DVD player in our suite so I got a film out of the library and watched that before our formal black and white Ball in the evening. It is good because we can also view our own DVD recordings of this cruise (very amateurish – but I will try to improve!) The table for two we now have by the window is very nice and the elderly American couple to one side of us are very pleasant. Elisa had informed our new waiters very well so they knew what we liked etc. It had rained all day and was a quite chilly Force 5 with 7.5 ft. swell as we headed south west with 2076 n. miles to Honolulu. The show was an American singer, Tony ‘B’, who sang songs from legendary entertainers. Clocks went back an hour.
Wednesday 7th February. Ships time was 9 hours behind the UK as we continued our south westerly circle track across the Pacific Ocean towards the Hawaiian Islands. We sailed over the Murray Fracture Zone, one of the principal east-west rifts in the crust of the northeast Pacific Basin, with depths averaging 4500 metres. Alan went to another lecture by Geoffrey Blainey, followed by a new lecturer, Bill Miller, talking about the Great Atlantic Liners. The temperature was 15 degrees, cloudy with showers and quite a roll on the ship due to the swell and Force 7; luckily we had become accustomed throughout our six weeks. After Alan’s swim and my gym we decided to eat in our suite and miss the formal evening as it was a repeat of the last segments cocktail party and show - so we ‘slummed’ it while Victor set out the dining table and served our three courses and champagne with his usual flourish. It was DVD time then for the remainder of the evening (Alan fell asleep, but he needed to, I don’t know how he keeps going so long on such little sleep!)
Thursday 8th February. After a rough night at sea with drawers flying open and closed we were pleased to get up and greet the warmer climate of 20 degrees, although we still had a Force 5 and 12 ft. swell. Fortunately, we were well enough to enjoy the morning lecture with astronaut, Col. Walter Cunningham; he had some amazing tales to tell. Today we sailed over the Huddell Seamount with depths averaging 2000 metres. After lunch we were delighted to attend the RADA production of ‘Bottom’s Dream’ an hour tale taken from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. The theatre company, lead by Clive Kneller, whom we met on our last QM2 cruise, will be on until Sydney and have three more shows to perform. After that we both slept until Victor woke us up for canapés at 5.30pm! In the evening we joined the team playing ‘Call My Bluff’ and won! The clocks go back an hour ready for Honolulu tomorrow and I am sending this now as the Internet is difficult to log on to in this area, it takes an hour. Not many folk about due to rough seas, but it has got warmer.