We wake today to rough seas, clear skies, and a welcome drop in humidity as we track south-west. We’ve gone from autumn in the north to spring in the south. We’re now on our way to Tauranga in New Zealand, with four sea days ahead, and somewhere along the way we cross the International Date Line.
It’s worth knowing what we’re actually crossing. The line is imaginary, running roughly along the 180th meridian, exactly opposite Greenwich on the far side of the planet. It isn’t defined by any treaty or international law, it’s a cartographic convention, so no governing body officially decides where it sits. That’s why it zigzags. Rather than slice straight through island nations and split a country across two calendar days, the line bends around them. Sail west across it, as we are, and you jump forward a day. Sail east and you get one back.
The line has moved more than once, and the stories are good. On 1 January 1995 Kiribati shifted a huge section of it eastward so the whole country sat on the same day. The line now bulges out as far as 150 degrees west, east of Honolulu where we were only days ago. The Kiritimati islands became the first inhabited place on Earth to see in the year 2000, which the Kiribati government has happily promoted ever since. Then in 2011 Samoa moved to the western side of the line to line up its working week with Australia and New Zealand, its major trading partners. The result was that Friday 30 December 2011 simply never happened in Samoa. The islands went from Thursday 29 straight to Saturday 31. All of this stretches the world’s time zones to 26 hours rather than 24, running from UTC minus 12 (the uninhabited Baker and Howland Islands) to UTC plus 14 (Kiribati’s Line Islands). We lose a day on this trip, which I’ll try not to take personally.
We head out this morning for trivia, general knowledge and travel today. We do really well with general knowledge, scoring 18 out of 20. Who knew Brazil has the largest fresh water stores of any country? And do you know the fastest ocean-based creature? We said Orca/dolphin. It is in fact the black marlin. Interestingly there is a group of six passengers with a team name madjag. It seems they are annoying some people, including Mardi and I. They go to every trivia event and invariably win. They do a bit of whooping and hooting and it’s now grating with a few folks. They’ll go home with a ton of pop sockets. Celebrity’s life changing prize!
For the travel quiz we score 12. A bit tougher, naming US national parks and obscure South American rivers.
We then enjoy some room time on the balcony before lunch. Lunch is salad, parsnip soup, and a yummy crumbed prawn roll. After lunch we enjoy the lounge and have a restful, quiet afternoon. I read that Jeffrey Archer has died. I’ve been reading a number of his books lately and just completed the Kane and Abel trilogy (Kane and Abel, The Prodigal Daughter, and Shall We Tell the President?). All three are excellent. He died at home in London on 5 October, aged 86, the day before his final novel, Adam and Eve, was released. I’m currently reading Master of the Game by Sidney Sheldon. Another good, but long, read.
During the afternoon I also do a bit of work and finish off a number of tasks from my meeting yesterday.
We head up to the lounge for a cocktail and bump into Aldo and Rosina, and chat with them for a while before dinner. Dinner is light tonight, some duck soup and a couple of salads.
After dinner we head to the theatre.
We enjoy The Australian Beatles, and we loved every minute. They’re a Perth band who have turned a Beatles tribute into a genuine world tour, with shows across Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, New Zealand and China, and regular stints on cruise ships like this one. Tribute acts can go either way. This one sits firmly on the right side of the line.
What sets them apart is the commitment to detail. The costumes are authentic, the instruments are the real deal, and they even have a left-handed Paul (from time to time - he wasn’t with them tonight) which is exactly the sort of detail that makes a Beatles fan sit up straighter. The show works its way through the band’s history, from the early mop-top days and matching suits, through the colourful Sgt. Pepper years, and on to the Abbey Road era. It’s a neat trick to watch four blokes from Perth compress a decade of the most influential music ever recorded into a single evening, with a costume change thrown in for good measure.
There’s real credibility behind it too. Members of the band have played the Cavern Club in Liverpool, and their drummer, Dave Swan, is the Australian Ambassador to the Beatles Story museum there. That’s not a bad CV for a band whose home base is about as far from Liverpool as you can get. It showed on stage. These guys know the songs, the harmonies, and the in-between banter, and the theatre was singing along within minutes. Mardi and I did our share of that too.
A quick visit to the casino, but it’s cold and the croupier on the roulette table has the personality of a light pole. We leave after using the credits Celebrity gave us.
A nightcap of Baileys and a restful night.
