World cruise 17

February 8

"Sailing, sailing over the bounding main." The Tasman Sea is living up to its reputation. It's not the worst I've been through, and today was better than last night, but you definitely wanted to hold onto something solid as you moved around. However, things smoothed out as the day wore on from a 13 foot swell last night to only (put quotes around that if you like) 8 feet at lunchtime today and maybe 6 feet by late afternoon.

Other than that, a quiet day at sea. We did have to pick up our passports for Australian Immigration when we get to Sydney. Until the last year or so it used to be done on board ship during the crossing from New Zealand, but I guess everything is tighter now.

February 9

Our second day on the Tasman. I woke up at some point in the middle of the night because we had stopped rocking! This morning the ocean was almost flat, and by mid-morning the sun was out and the Tasman Sea was perfectly flat! That's okay with me as it made walking around the ship a bit easier. (Oddly enough, the most difficult thing about the ship is several places where the nap on the carpet pulls my wheels diagonally off to the right when the hallway goes left.)

There should be a special color named Tasman Blue that is halfway between Midnight, Navy, and Royal. It is spectacular! And the fluffy white clouds around the horizon are icing on the cake.

Yet another time change last night. We are now on Sydney time which is 16 hours ahead of Eastern time ... Um ... Well ... When it was 8:20 a.m. here and 4:20 p.m. yester day there ... that makes my head hurt to figure it out.

We went to the show, a cabaret act, this evening after dinner. It was quite entertaining. However, during the middle of it, as the Cruise Director commented, the Captain hit a rough patch, and we started to roll again. That made the trek from the front to the back of the ship a tad adventurous. We are hoping to get up early partly to see us sail into Sydney Harbor to dock at Circular Quay near the Opera House, and partly because we have an all day tour to the Blue Mountains.