Monday, November 17

Honolulu, Hawaii. I had planned to sleep in this morning, but at about 9:15 a.m. the ship held a fire drill for its crew members. This involves a series announcements and alarm signals piped into every cubbyhole on the entire ship at full volume. So much for sleep!

I didn’t do a whole lot today...went back to the Aloha Tower Marketplace and wandered around there a bit more through a some of Hawaii’s famous “liquid sunshine.”

I came back to the ship for a bit of lunch and found that Jill had returned from her jaunt to see friends on the Big Island. After that I somehow managed to fritter away the rest of the afternoon doing not much of anything which is ever so easy to do on board a cruise ship.

Before dinner here was a lovely program of young girls demonstrating the hula as you can see here. After dinner just about everybody on board went to the Crew Show. This time they held both the Filipino and Indonesian Crew Shows on the same night. Several of the ones I know wre in it. One is Joseph (in the Filipino show) who is a steward in the Sea View on the aft of Lido deck and a wine steward in the dining room. For some reason, he has decided that I am a good one to tease. He tries to sneak up on me and surprise me as I’m leaving the dining room. Most times I catch him at it, but a couple of times he’s managed to surprise me. If I did have my Fijian water pistol along, I could get him good! Also in the Indonesian part of the show was Rahman, the captain of our section of the dining room.

Tuesday, November 18

Lahaina, Maui. We are here for only part of the day...sailing at 2:00 p.m....and not docked but tendering in. I got up early with the intention of going ashore for at least a little while, but by the end of breakfast, the weather was more liquid than sunshine, so I gave it a miss. Jill went in, however, and said the rain wasn’t bad. She found a Crazy Shirt store (one of which I had been hoping to get to in Honolulu, but they were all too far away from where we were docked). She brought me back a Kliban Sumo Cat shirt!

Of course the weather cleared completely just about the time they were raising the tenders and anchor. Jill and I had been working on the dragon again (yes, I’ll post a photo of her when she’s done), so took an ice cream break to watch us sail around the north end of Maui and out into the Pacific headed at last for San Diego. Thus I was able to get some nice photos of Maui.

The North Pacific is running about 6 foot swells and the ship is doing about 21 knots...enough to remind one of the old sailor’s adage of “one hand for self, one hand for the ship.” It will probably remain like this until we get to San Diego.