Saturday, 4 February 2017
At Sea — South Pacific Ocean
Stats @ Ship’s Time 5:45p (TAHT) … UTC 3:45a (5 February)
Temp: 84.4F (29.1C)
Position: 12.38.09S / 144.42.45W
Travel Makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.
~ Thomas Fuller ~
A month already?!? I refuse to think that already we have just 150 days left in our RTW voyage. As Scarlett would say, “I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow.”
You can tell we are below the Equator by how early the skies brighten up now. I woke up at 5:00a, and though the sun had not yet broken over the horizon — sunrise was set for 5:28a — it was already daylight. I debated going back to sleep, but my body signaled that it had gotten enough rest — after all, overnight we regained the ½-hour we lost for Nuku Hiva, putting us on Tahiti Time ;-) … heh, heh, heh.
I’ve been battling the signs of a cold for days now, so I was bound and determined to rest today and limit all social contact. With Mui providing room service, I managed to stay in pretty much all day. I feel a lot better, and hope I have won the battle against the respiratory crud going around the ship.
A nice breeze — the wind has calmed down, sunshine, and blue skies … why would I want to be anywhere but on the veranda during my self-imposed incarceration? So that’s where I settled myself. Then, around 10:30a I heard thunder signaling a change in the weather. The sky became overcast, black clouds gathered, and on the horizon I could see it was raining. Sitting under my “sunbrella” I figured it would serve to keep me dry when the rain caught up to the ship … and it did … for a while. Then the rain turned into a downpour and the wind picked up. Not wanting to risk the umbrella flying off with me “a la Mary Poppins,” I gave in and went inside until the rain stopped and the sun came out again.
By the way, the makeshift umbrella stand Mui jury rigged with the PVC pipe we bought in Hilo has been working out great … I’ll have to get a photo of it one of these days.
(P.S. I do not recommend this “sunbrella” solution to anyone unless they have an oversized veranda that is mostly protected from the elements … certainly those with a veranda on either side of the ship should not even remotely consider the idea.)
Despite not doing anything more strenuous than processing and uploading photos, tweaking blog posts, reviewing with Mui plans for tomorrow’s excursion in Rangiroa, and reading e-books, the day passed way too fast. I debated going up to the Terrace Café for dinner — the ship picked up tuna in Nuku Hiva yesterday — but I resisted the temptation. Nor was I tempted by the O-hosted cocktail hour that was held this evening to thank passengers for their patience in the face of recent port cancellation … might someone have read my suggestion on one of the blog posts ;-)
Captain B announced at noon that we will be arriving in Rangiroa at 7:00a — an hour earlier than the schedule shows. Of course, that might well mean that’s when he expects to pick up the pilot and it might still be another hour before we get to our anchorage inside the atoll near Tiputa Pass. The narrow pass is notorious for having very strong currents, so I have put in a request to Neptune for calm seas and no crosswinds. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow if this Shellback has any pull with the mighty king.
© 2015-2017 — All rights reserved by Erin Erkun.
I have been enjoying your blog ever since you began your adventure and just wanted to say thanks for taking me along on the journey. The first thing I do each morning is to check and see if there is a new post! I know doing a blog is a time-consuming endeavor and you do it so well...both the commentary and photos are superb!
ReplyDeleteI was particularly interested to read your comments recently on what photo-editing software you use. Could you also share a little bit about how you compose the blog posts? Do you use Blogger directly or some other software or app? I assume you must first do the posts offline and then upload once you are finished? I have been doing a blog covering our travels as well, but write the posts after we return home due to internet constraints and mostly because of the time it would take to do them "live". However...your blog has inspired me to maybe TRY and do live posts as we cruise to Alaska in a few months.
Hi Mary, glad you are enjoying the blog. Most of my travels have been documented after the fact as well -- but I do try to write in my private journal daily so that I can use those notes to refresh my memory, or even copy and paste to the posts when I get home and have more time to work on the blog.
DeleteI compose my blog posts using Open Live Writer ... which was Microsoft Live Writer until Microsoft gave up supporting it. In my opinion it is the best offline blog editor out there ... so much so that I even partitioned my MacBook Air in order to install Win10 so I can use it. I especially like that it has a regular text editing page, but if yo want, you can flip over to see the html text that actually gets uploaded.
I type (or copy/paste) the text and then get links to my SmugMug-hosted online photos and insert them into the content in OLW where I want them to show (it's for these links that I am glad I have the capability to switch to html). Of course, it's possible to insert the pictures directly from your computer, in which case the html tab would not be something you would use.
Then, when I am ready, or when I have internet, I can publish the post to the blog. It's been fairly easy to stay on top of photo processing and blog writing with all the sea days we had to cross the Pacific, but those long runs of sea days are now over, so we'll see how I do. I am already four days behind, so I may have to give up on the pictures soon and just upload the stories.
Thanks for the help! Any live blogging I do would be on my iPad so I don't think the Open Live Writer would be an option. I do have the Blogger app, but don't care for it.
DeleteI will probably just do as you do...keep a journal and then blog when I return home. I know I wouldn't take the time to edit photos (especially on the iPad) while we are traveling so would still have to add those later anyway.
I have my fingers crossed that you will be able to keep up with your blog on this journey...even if it is just text! Best wishes for smooth sailing!
I am looking forward to the Rangiroa stories, and that extra hour might be wonderful. I hope so. I know how you love your quiet veranda sea days, hopefully you fought of the nasty bug with your quiet time.
ReplyDelete