Noon report:

• Position: S 27° 25.70′, W 166° 05.64′
• Speed: 17.1 knots
• Course: 241º

The walk yesterday morning was particularly brutal – hot and humid, so I decided to try something different. I’ve found that I’m ususally awake around 4:30 every morning – coming out of a REM cycle, doing a fluid adjustment, then back to sleep – so today instead of going back to sleep I got up, dressed, and hit the deck. I finished and was back to the room with a celebratory Iced Mocha as Cheryl was leaving for the gym. This gave me a chance to relax, cool off, shower, and get a head start on trying to upload photos to the blog before breakfast.

The first lecture today was a look at the Natural History of New Zealand.

New Zealand is particularly interesting in that it isn’t on the way to anywhere so nobody has ever stopped there unless they are intending to go there. Therefore their flora and fauna are the product of even greater isolation than Australia.

At 11:00 we were treated to another of Russell Lee’s talks

This talk looked at the heroism and lives of five people whose actions significantly impacted the Philippines during WWII.

After lunch we returned to our stateroom for a bit of reading, some internet frustration, and a well-deserved nap.

At 4:30 we skipped the lecture “Did World War I Change the Course of History?” and moved to the pool deck to stake out a place for the 5:30 Crossing the International Dateline celebration.

I direct your attention to our location listed in the noon report above. Obviously (if it’s running correctly) the dateline runs thru the 180th meridian. So at 166º we’re nowhere near it. But like any timezone line, it gets bumped about a bit by politics. Actually it seems that we’ve already crossed it a couple of times during our southward trek from Hawaii to Bora Bora. So who knows. On the other hand, what does it really matter? By the time we get to New Zealand we’ll have crossed it and “ship time” is already in that time zone. So if at 5:30 they tell us it has become Saturday we’ll drink a toast to Saturday and continue on.

The 6:30 lecture looked at the development of the aircraft carrier from it’s earliest incarnation before the first world war to today’s central role in naval operations.

BBB was the worst yet. We correctly identified the Dardanelles and the harp but still only came away with 7 out of 20. Obviously we need to study harder.

So I’ll leave you with a sunrise shot.

Now it’s time to reset our clocks (not the time, just the date) and head to bed.

Till tomorrow, R