leaving honolulu...

We have spent a lovely couple of days in Honolulu (Latitude: 21 degrees 18.5' N; Longitude: 157 degrees 52.0 W) with Clark. We left the port about an hour and a half ago, and have had rather rough sailing since. The only articles I can find about ship movement that are comprehensive are also very complicated and technical but I will provide the links anyway: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacentric_height and http://www.seasickness.org/sea-sickness-on-a-cruise.html. Basically there is side to side movement called rolling, and front to back movement called pitching. These combine in various ways depending on currents and weather (it made me sort of sick just reading them -- or maybe it's our present movement), and can be offset a bit by stabilizers in the vessel. This ship does have stabilizers, but we have been told by some of the crew that sometimes the stabilizers are not used in order to allow us to move faster and save fuel. We were rolling quite a bit a few minutes ago and several things in the cabin went flying; I heard things falling above us as well in the Union. John has slept through this as usual, and it has calmed a bit now anyway. I was just starting this blog and threw my computer across the floor to catch other things, then had to re-boot and start over to make everything work again. We are moving at over 20 knots which is faster than we normally go, but the movement is not as bad now.

We arrived in Honolulu at 6:00am on Sunday, April 19th, and after an hour or so of misunderstandings around communication with various devices, we connected with Clark to learn that he was outside the terminal building. Security around ships in the US is about the same as with planes, so he could not get into the terminal area because the ship had not cleared. This took a couple of hours then John and I went down and were able to bring him on board since we had provided identifying information for him several days prior and his name went on a visitor manifest. I regret in all the confusion that I never got a photo of Clark on the ship -- what a blunder! He did manage to find a place to take a photo of John and me on the deck of the ship from the shore, but I don't have a copy of that photo yet. In any case it was wonderful to see him!

We had booked rooms at the Ilikai in Waikiki http://www.ilikaihotel.com/, where John has stayed a few times over the years and the family has stayed once before. We had been told in Global Studies the other day that Hawaii is really suffering from the current economic situation since they are so dependent on tourism. Many individuals have cancelled vacation plans recently, and several conferences have cancelled for the next two years which will have a large impact on the state. We found the Ilikai to have much lower service levels than we had experienced on previous trips, which was disappointing, but Clark found an article online late today [Article no longer available] that indicated there had been a foreclosure only last week -- no wonder no one is interested in giving good service! It is sad news indeed.

We did have a good visit in spite of the hotel issues. Clark and I had a long walk along Waikiki yesterday so that he could take some pictures, and today we rented a car and drove north through the center of the island to the north shore then back again. We didn't do the long route around because we were concerned about time, but we felt we had seen the best parts. Above all it was nice to have some time together. We had seen many of the other Oahu sights around Pearl Harbor and so on during our visit a few years ago.

On ship time was 6:00pm so John and I had to return the rental car and head toward the ship around 4:00pm, and Clark's flight was to leave at 9:00pm. He is planning to sleep on the plane and arrive on time for work in the morning. John is teaching in the morning too -- I am the only one who gets to sleep late!

This visit served to remind us how little time we have left on the ship. We will be in Guatemala in 7 days and during that time we have the last four teaching days of the semester, two study days and an exam day. We are in Guatemala for three days, then finish the semester after that with another study day and an exam day. It's hard to believe we are so close to being finished and heading home.

Current location, 2250 ship time...
Latitude: 21 degrees 24.3' N
Longitude: 157 degrees 1.9' W
Course: 69 degrees

We advance clocks one hour tonight, making our time 5 hours behind EDT, 4 hours behind CDT, 3 hours behind MDT and 2 hours behind PDT.