Wallowing along

24 Apr somewhere between Tonga and Vanuatu. The heat finally broke in Tonga on Friday, our last liberty day, so I snorkeled on a cloudy rainy day with thunder, lightening, and 25 knot wind gusts. We were a merry band of 14 Aussies, 2 Kiwis, and 4 Americans. Our host captains did their best to make it a great day for us by choosing a protected snorkeling spot, serving lunch on the boat instead of a beach BBQ, and keeping the rum punch flowing. The fish and coral don’t care about the weather so there was plenty to see. I don’t think it was my imagination that the coral didn’t look as healthy as on my trips in 1998 and 2005.

On Saturday morning we stowed and secured our belongings, and at 1500 we left Vava’u for Vanuatu. I decided to multi-task by working out on the elliptical in the mini-gym on a bridge overlooking the ship’s bow, while watching the crew hoist the anchors. Soon we were headed out the channel into the open Pacific. There was a glitch 3 hours underway, which kept the engineers busy for a few hours, but all seems fine since then. Thankfully the Pacific is living up to its name so far - peaceful - calm seas and about 12 knots of breeze. The Cleveland’s class of ship has a wallowing motion like an alligator, hence her gator logo/mascot. So she rocks slowly back and forth, more to port than starboard, while the bow swings from side to side, and the rocking seems to pause now and then. Definitely an odd motion, unlike any sailboat that I‘ve been on. I wore my wrist seabands for the first 24 hours to avoid seasickness, but have removed them for now. Getting around ship isn’t too difficult in these conditions so I hope they hold. There are 2 straps to hook vertically across the rack (bunk) opening to prevent you from rolling out in rough seas. The elliptical faces starboard so when she heels to port you need to hang on to the handles to keep from being pitched off the back. But the view is fantastic - blue water with occasional whitecaps, puffy clouds on the horizon, and no land in sight!

The mess has run out of salad greens, so it’s canned/frozen vegetables until resupply. I hope the apples and grapes don’t run out as they are the only fresh fruit available now. I’ve put some photos on a Flickr site (this should be the link to my photostream): http://www.flickr.com/photos/babs-pp11/ . It was miraculous to be able to upload them considering the bandwidth limitations, but they’re unorganized until I figure out how to do that.
Cheers to all!