February 19: Fifth Day of Five-Day Passage to Hawai'i

 

Cruising at 15 knots, with a 25-knot east wind and 11-foot seas, at noon, the ship was 282 NM from Kahului, Maui. Since we were traveling close to due west, the wind and waves were on our stern, making the ship's stabilizers effective in canceling much of the pitching motion. Pitching is vertical bow/stern motion, rolling is side-to-side tilt, yawing is the bow weaving through the water, and corkscrewing means there will be lots of available seating at meal times.

Nieuw Amsterdam is circled by the blue arrowhead circled in red in the middle of this Marine Traffic app screenshot. Dark blue are passenger ships, red are tankers, green are cargo ships, orange are fishing vessels, and light blue are tugs. To help provide a sense of scale, the Marine Traffic app shows that the tanker north of us, heading east and appearing close to us, is 59 miles from Nieuw Amsterdam.

Since leaving San Diego, neither Pam nor I have sighted another ship. Admittedly, we have not spent much time on deck, but we have almost always had a sea view.

It is interesting to see the number of cargo vessels passing north of Hawaii compared to south of it. There is a conga line of tankers moving east and west below the islands. There are only a few fishing vessels north and east of the islands.

After four days of being completely lazy, today we had to be a tad less so as we prepared for five days of land-based activities beginning at 8:45 tomorrow morning. Preparations were mostly going down a checklist. On it were things like making sure camera batteries were charged, having an adequate supply of small-denomination bills, and laying out binoculars, extra sunscreen, etc., for our daypacks. 

Having been fortunate to visit Hawaii on several occasions and being of a certain age, we are not setting out to do as much as possible for five straight days; we will pace ourselves and enjoy what we do.