Thursday, April 16, 2009

albatross, rainbows and sunset...

Ship time is currently 2310 although we will be advancing one hour tonight. Our current location...
Latitude: 27 degrees 25.09' N
Longitude: 178 degrees 29.90' WEST! (we crossed the date line around 1830 at about 28 degrees latitude)
Course: 121 degrees

We will be passing south of Midway Island http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_Atoll or http://www.midwayisland.com/ shortly -- Latitude there is 28 degrees 12' N and Longitude is 177 degrees 21' W.

Today has been a very exciting day at sea. It was a beautiful day with lots of sunshine and we have albatrosses following in our wake waiting to see what the boat churns up in the way of food. These are smaller birds than were seen by some near South Africa, but are still quite large with a wingspan of seven feet. There are two types, Laysan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laysan_Albatross and black-footed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-footed_Albatross, and we have seen both. There were a dozen or so off the stern today and this is one of the many times I wished I had invested in a better camera for this trip, but I did get a bit of video below.

A little later this afternoon I was in our cabin looking out the window and could see nearby a storm with some interesting clouds. I went to the port side deck near us to have a closer look and take some photos, and as I watched, rainbows began to appear. The photo is not nearly as beautiful as the sight was, but maybe you can get the idea. There was a double rainbow that changed as the ship moved through. At one point the bottom one arced all the way across the sky, but I could not capture it on our camera.

Once the rainbows faded I walked to the starboard side of the ship where I knew I could see the sunset. A fellow traveller was there with her camera and mentioned that she was still trying to see a "green flash" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_flash at one of our sunsets. I had never heard of this phenomenon and asked her about it. She gave me a brief explanation. Later she and I were at another event where someone else on the ship said that she had seen the green flash tonight. I guess I will have to look for it now!
Tonight my friend Maggie Thomas performed with several of the drama students in the play "The Persians" by Aeschylus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Persians. When I had talked with her earlier today Maggie seemed quite anxious about whether they were ready to perform, but I was quite impressed tonight with all the performances. An action-packed day -- time for bed!

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

tulips in yokohama, beauty on the ship...

Current ship time is just after midnight on Wednesday, April 15 and our location is...

Latitude: 30 degrees 41.21' N
Longitude:175 degrees 24.30' E
Course: 122 degrees

As you can see, we still have not crossed the date line, but the ship date is set as if we had. Seas have calmed considerably and we are steadily making our way to Hawaii.

I was organizing photos and want to share some from Yokohama of these beautiful tulips. We had a dinner tonight in the "special" dining room with our shipboard family, so we also have a photo from that event. It was great to have a break from the usual ship food and to be able to dress up for dinner, but the best part was having time to catch up with everyone and exchange stories of our experiences since we last got together. I am so happy that John and I have had an opportunity to get to know Jane, Monica, Sarah and Victoria and enrich our own journey by sharing parts of theirs. The tulips are
very lovely, but they don't hold a candle to the beauty of these four young women.

























Monday, April 13, 2009

rockin' and rollin'

Ship time is April 12, 2230 hours. Our current location...
Latitude: 33 degrees 21.63' N
Longitude: 161 degrees 50.84' E
Course: 103 degrees

As you can see, we have not reached the International Date Line yet, but we have changed the date nonetheless. We have had very heavy seas today, and they seem worse tonight. We have been told that this rough weather will likely last through tomorrow morning, and that we should make sure things are secured in our cabins. Since dinner I have been very queasy, so I will keep this short and go to bed shortly and hopefully find some relief. John is sleeping through it as usual.

If you check the website http://www.oceanweather.com/data/ and click on Western Region under North Pacific on the left side of the page, you can get some information about the weather. I don't know whether I feel better or worse since I located this page, but it does not look like it will last lots longer (ever the optimist!).

Sunday, April 12, 2009

time and location...

It is 2210 ship time on Easter Sunday, April 12 (the first of two Easters) as I start this...
Latitude: 34 degrees 20.28' N
Longitude: 155 degrees 3.05' E
Course: 100 degrees

The International Date Line is at 180 degrees longitude and we will reach it in a few hours. Currently we are 15 hours ahead of EDT, 16 hours ahead of CDT, 17 hours ahead of MDT, 18 hours ahead of PDT. Once we cross the date line, we will be behind everyone -- 9 hours behind EDT, 8 hours behind CDT, 7 hours behind MDT, 6 hours behind PDT, until April 15 when we advance another hour closer to each time zone. We are definitely moving closer to home!

Seas coming out of Yokohama were quite calm, and although there is a fair bit more motion today, it is either not as bad as the Atlantic crossing, or we have become better sailors. I did see a few seasick patches behind people's ears today, but not many. The constant rocking and the time changes of the last couple of days caused me to be very sleepy today, but I will be happy if it does not get any worse than this.

We have a Dean's Memo that comes out each day we are at sea, and it usually contains an article called "From the Crow's Nest" with some interesting facts about sea travel, birds, geography and so on. Yesterday's explained the concept of a "great circle", the shortest distance between two points on a sphere's surface. This explains why sometimes the shortest distance requires moving in a direction that is not intuitive. There is a website http://gc.kls2.com/ where you can enter the airport codes for Yokohama and Honolulu (YOK-HNL) in the first box and see the route we are taking. For those of you who like to explore these things there are other variables you can play with on that page as well.

Now that we have several days at sea and the trip is drawing to a close, students are very involved in writing papers and preparing for exams. Professors are marking assignments and putting the exams together. There are only 10 class days left and the remaining days are study days or exam days. The two stops we have left are only two days each, and people are starting to anticipate and talk about how they think they will feel at the end of the journey.