30th August 2016

Sea Day Quite rough sea. Temp 25c

We both spent a very disturbed sleep last night as there is a large swell running causing a large movement of the ocean. This will be the last time we will go to New Zealand by ship. This rough weather happens every time, we still have Auckland to Sydney to go, wish us luck. As the ship was rocking & rolling we decided rather than go to the buffet on deck 14 for breakfast we would go to the dining room on deck 6 where there was less movement. Geoff Gray’s lecture today was “Life in Todays japan” but as it was in the Princess Theatre with the ship movement quite pronounced there and I was not particularly interested I gave it a miss and instead we found ourselves a seat down on deck 5 and read. This afternoon the Pop Choir and the Ukelele Group who are all passengers gave their concert and it was really good. The ship is now going slower than usual to make life more comfortable. However, with still 470 nautical miles to go before Auckland and we are only doing 13 miles per hour we will not be there by 10am tomorrow. Later on the Captain came on the Pa to say that the forecast is for the swell to calm down and he will then be able to increase speed. Even at 19 miles per hour we will still be struggling. It did calm down and we enjoyed the evening entertainment in the Princess Theatre which was the International Crew Show where members of the crew who have performed for each other in their area showed us what they could do. Some were nearly as good as some of the professional entertainers we have had. It was a good night. I am actually finishing this entry in the blog while in bed on Wednesday morning at 7.30am. after a very restful sleep. I called room service and ordered cups of tea so it could not be better. I can report that the rocking and rolling has ceased and at present it is so still you would think we had docked but we are actually doing 20 MPH. 200 mainly New Zealanders had their cases out overnight as they are going home today. We are already thinking about how we are going to fit all our stuff back in our cases together with what we have picked up along the way. At least we are not flying so we don’t have to worry about weight.