Auckland Skyline

February 5, 2013 Sea Day

Bruce Linder lectured today on Matthew Fontaine Maury and Nathaniel Bowditch, two American navigators who changed the world of navigation. Bowditch had an incredible mind for mathematics and took existing books on navigational data at the time and made thousands of corrections from his own experiences at sea thus creating his own book on navigation, which is still used today. Maury was a naval officer who combined data about sea currents, wind currents and other data to create the most efficient ways of traversing the oceans. Many times these directions were a much longer distance but provided a quicker and safer journey for ships. This reduced not only time but also the cost of insurance and loss of life.

Pianist Naki Ataman gave an afternoon concert, which was an hour-long performance of popular tunes from the twentieth century. He is an excellent pianist and provided an enjoyable afternoon.

Since we missed our stop at Rarotonga in the Cook Islands due to rough seas we arrived in Auckland this evening around 6:00PM. This is also the end of the journey for about 80 of the passengers onboard, as well as the embarkation point for a new group of passengers. We have had 1,102 guests onboard although the ship can hold over 1,300 guests. During our trip thus far the ship has traveled 9,728 nautical miles and consumed 39,500 gallons of diesel fuel per day. A nautical mile is equal to 1.15 statute miles for those of you who may be asking. The ship has produced 370,000 gallons of potable water per day not to mention the 160,000 gallons of potable water we have consumed.

We had a casual dinner in the Lido cafeteria before we ventured out this evening with our friend Tom from Lake Como, Italy to find an Internet location. McDonald’s has free Internet Wi-Fi for only 30 minutes. Those with Apple computers have better luck logging onto the Internet but those with other models do not have any luck connecting. We ended up at a Starbucks coffee shop where you get an access code good for thirty minutes with a purchase. Luckily we were each able to log on to our computers with the same passcode.

There is no scheduled entertainment this evening except for a showing of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which is shown in the main lounge.