2024 Sydney to Seattle

 Overnight we crossed the equator and this afternoon there is scheduled a "ceremony" where 10 guests who have never crossed the equator and otherwise known as "pollywogs" will become "shellbacks".  This morning at 8:30 I led the Bible study in Princess LIve.  It went well and I led discussion around verses that include the two words "In Christ".  Sue Beard gave her enrichment talk about Honolulu.  After lunch retired Ambassador Lewis Lucke presented his enrichment lecture on the funeral of King Hussein.  It was really interesting.   The crossing the equator ceremony was held in the main pool/fountain area on deck 16.  It followed much the same process as what we've experienced on Holland America except that there were no senior officers present to act as a jury, guests were the pollywogs, and none of them took a swim after being slathered with meringue.  And for the first time in many crossings, the ceremony was performed in a downpour. ...

 On this second sea day, I woke up at 3am and couldn't get back to sleep until 6am which only lasted an hour as we needed to be awake and prepared for the church service at 8:30am in the Vista Lounge.  The church service was very well attended with well over 100 in attendance.  Ron gave a terrific sermon on John 9 which is the last of the 7 miracles John records in his gospel account.  Afterwards I attended Sue Beard's presentation on the history of the Hawaiian Islands.  It was interesting but didn't have much new information for me as we've seen many such presentations on previous cruisers. There was a long gap before Lewis Lucke's next enrichment lecture which was on US Foreign Aid.  It was really good and interesting to hear about the USAID program.  Based upon these first two presentations, I purchased his book "From Timbuktu to Running for Cover" which is an engaging read. I had the rest of the afternoon off from events so I was able to restring ...

 Today we started our next to last long stretch of sea days as we make our way to Honolulu, Hawaii.  There's all measure of things to do all day, but I chose to simply attend the Bible study and the enrichment talk on the 2010 Haiti earthquake response by the retired US Ambassador Lewis Lucke.  As I approached Princess Live, Ron Shaefer, the current Bible study leader, approached me and asked if I could take over for a few days.  I agreed to it so I'll be leading on Mon-Wed which are the days before we reach Honolulu.  Ambassador Lucke was a great presenter and did not read from a script which was refreshing. After lunch I caught up with my blog and watched my YouTube subscriptions in the cabin.  It made for a very relaxing afternoon.  For evening entertainment schedule, we decided to change things up a bit.  I went to the Vista lounge at 7pm for the 8:30pm comedian's show.  Angela went to the 7:30pm vocalist, Meghan Murphy (Big Red) and then...

 Some days and some places are more special than others.  Moorea is one of those places for us. And today would have a special surprise for us.  But more on that later.  We didn't leave Papeete until sometime between 5 and 6am for the very short 10 mile sail over to Moorea.  When we were here in 2018 we totally rebelled in the snorkeling and other scenic beauty of Moorea.  So we were certainly glad to be back and were able to book a snorkeling tour from the ship after being on a waitlist.  This is a tender port, so we met up with our group in the Princess Theater and were promptly sent down to a "water shuttle" (tender on other cruise lines) at 8:15 and after a short tender ride we quickly transferred to a catamaran.  We exited the reef protected harbor, had a safety drill and then headed back into the protected reef area to a shallow spot just past an abandoned hotel complex. At this first stop we spent nearly an hour in the water with sting rays...

 After cancelling our snorkeling excursion, we slept in and after breakfast we left the ship and found a private tour operator who offered us a round the island tour on a bus for $50 per person.  We were directed to a tent to the left of the dock and between our dock and the next dock which this morning had the Star Breeze berthed there.  I would note that there are a number of tour operators there and one can book tours for both Tahiti and Moorea and for future days.  There are water tours, snorkeling tours, 4x4 tours, and more as of this writing.  After finalizing our ticket purchase, the departure time was set for 11am for a 4 hour tour.  With over an hour free before the departure time, we walked over to the market and shopped a bit.  I also visited a motorcycle store and priced motorcycles.  They are certainly expensive here with a 125cc bike going for $4k US$. They are Chinese and possibly Japanese bikes.   After shopping we went back t...

 Our alarms went off at 7am and we could see Moorea out of the balcony window, so we knew we were close.  We showered, dressed and went up to the LIDO for breakfast   There we watched the ship enter the harbor, rotate counter clockwise, and back into its berth position.  This puts our port side stateroom on the city view side of the dock.  We finished breakfast and went back to the stateroom and assembled our gear for today's snorkeling adventure.  We were in the Princess Theater at 8:15am along with at least 500 other folks on Princess excursions.  We had several announcements trying to explain the delay which came down to slow clearance procedures.  Finally, an hour late, we were released to disembark the ship while those not on a Princess excursion had to continue waiting.  It's a fairly long pier walk and fortunately our catamaran was located there so we didn't have to take a bus or anything.   We were quickly boarded on the catamara...

 Today is our last day at sea on this leg of the voyage.  We attended the Bible Study in the Princess Live theatre before I attended the Paul Gaugin lecture by Sue Beard.  She was followed by Franz' last lecture which was on the topic of the Mutiny on the Bounty,  Both talks were quite good although Franz continued to read his presentation for the most part.   As a change of pace, I ordered street tacos from the Hamburger grill on deck 16, and they were quite good.  For the rest of the afternoon, I lounged and caught up on my YouTube videos and also spent some time on deck 16 aft looking at the propeller wash and the horizon in the distance.  It's pretty amazing to be sailing for 5 days and not see a single other vessel.  At 4:15pm, the volunteer POP Choir put on a presentation in the Piazza and it was quite good.  They sang 6 songs which played out a little story that the choir director, Morgan narrated in between songs.  We then enjoye...

 It was a nice long sleep last night, but the alarm still went off at 7:15am so we could make the 8:30am Bible Study which was showing on the APP tk be in the Vista Lounge.  Upon arriving at the Vista Lounge there was no leader and finally someone showed up and said that we were in the Princess Live theater.  So we walked down the hall and Ron was there and he indicated that we would be here from now on at 8:30am to 9:15am despite the APP showing if elsewhere and at varying times.  Ron then lectured on subjects what apart from the text which we found frustrating.  Near the end of the time, Martin came down and said there were 10 more up on Deck 14 which was set up for the study.  He retrieved the 10 and they came down. I attended Sue Beard's presentation on Moorea which was quite good.  She was followed by a shore excursions presentation which was just okay.  Many of the excursions are full and we yesterday received the last of our tickets for a w...

 We're in a time warp!  The twilight zone.  Because we crossed the international date line yesterday, we have to have two celebrations of the 21st of April.  It's turning out to be simply weird in a number of ways. We needed to wake up this morning at 7am to have enough time to eat breakfast and then attend what was labeled as the Interdenominational Church Service at 8:30am on the printed Princess Patter but labeled as the Bible Study on the electronic Princess APP.  I noted a number of other differences between the two information sources.  So, before I left the stateroom, I phoned the front desk and asked which source of information was correct and the clerk said to follow the printed Princess Patter.  So I photographed the printed document and will use that as my guide for today.  I had changed my phone to display today as yesterday and that messed up display of pictures and posts on Facebook and email.  So I ended up changing the date ba...

 After a fairly short sleep of around 6 hours, we woke up around 7am in order to attend the interdenominational Sunday service which was held in the Vista Lounge.  It was very well attended with over 100 in attendance.  Ron Schaefer gave a message on the beatitudes found in Matthew's gospel, chapter 5.  It was a very good sermon with some keen insight into the progressive nature of the beatitudes.  This service was followed immediately by the regular Bible study in the 14th Floor meeting room.  About 20 of us gathered and Ron shared a bit of his personal life and what his writing style is.  Another lady shared a very personal testimony of her faith journey.   The morning continued with Sue Beard's destination lecture on Polynesia and we enjoyed splitting a pizza in Alfredo's for lunch.  During this time we crossed over the international dateline.   After lunch Franz presented his Enrichment lecture on "The Strange Last Voyage of Frank Cr...