Three Days at Sea before Auckland Tomorrow

11^th-14^thOctober 2019

We are now in our third at sea day since leaving Pago Pago, having crossed the International Date Line last night, we have missed out on Sunday 13^th, so today is Monday 14^thOctober. The first two days at sea were great conditional to be on the water. Slight seas, wind around 10 knots and sunshine, although temperatures have been steadily dropping and we are now below 20 C.

Our arrival at Auckland tomorrow is scheduled for 7 am, and around 1000 passengers are disembarking, including Mike, Joy and Irene, so we will be on our own for the last leg of the cruise. All of the passengers disembarking will be replaced by a new intake as this ship continues up the east coast of Australia after Sydney where we will disembark.

This morning the weather turned foul, with strong winds (around 35 knots), and heavy rain. All outside decks were closed, so our morning walk did not happen today. As the day progressed, by mid afternoon, sunshine returned and the wing dropped to around 25 knots, and it is 18 C, so we are hopeful that conditions in Auckland will not be too miserable. The forecast suggests that rain is a strong possibility, but that is pretty standard for NZ at this time of the year.

Seas have built up during the day, and it is quite a contrast from the past 2 days when the sea has been dead flat.

As it will be our friends last day on board, we have booked to go to the Curtis Stone Restaurant tonight, for one last special dinner.

It was a bit of a challenge tonight to keep everything on the table as we rolled all over the place in challenging seas. We had a lovely dinner and covering the table with placemats with a bit of water on them stopped everything from sliding off the table.

The Captain advised that Auckland port was currently closed due to strong winds and he will advise later if there will be a delay to us docking there.