Day 03 - Downunder 2016 - Wed 09/28/16 - At Sea to Hawaii

It was our first day at sea and the morning started slow, very slow. The clocks were rolled back one hour so we gained an extra hour of sleep. There was a bit more motion to the ship and the bathroom sink drain made gurgling sounds throughout the night until I ran some tap water into the drain.

After another uncrowded breakfast in the Lido we made our way to the 9am Prayer and Reflection time which was led by an Australian man, Robert, who lives in the Seattle area. It turned out we had some long term connections at a school my wife formerly taught at. The time in this session was very refreshing.  

We then made our way to the Crow's Nest for a Cruise Critic meet and greet. It was a great time to finally meet the people who were to that point just screen names or more fundamentally 1's and 0's.

Carpet replacement 

For this leg of the cruise to Hawaii, there were two major lecture series. The first was on NASA presented by Lawrence Kuznutz who's NASA career involved designing space suits. Today's lecture was about the basics of NASA and space related topics. His lecture went overtime about 25 minutes which was the longest of any lecture on HAL that we have attended.

Lunch in the Lido was a bit more crowded but the Asian cuisine was great. After lunch I curled up in the Showroom At Sea for an hour to continue reading my book on the Great Reef.

The afternoon lecture was presented by Tom Goltz on Captain Cook. It was a good presentation. More reading of my book followed along with over a mile walk around the deck which was a bit chilly. Warmer weather should be ahead of us.

We enjoyed our first dinner in the main dining room including some spirited discussion with a Canadian couple about the upcoming US presidential election.

Patrick McMahon, a singer from Australia was the evening's entertainment. He was a spirited singer of cover songs of Elvis, Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond, and Kenny Rogers. We capped our evening off with the 9pm showing of the Elvis and Nixon movie in the Wajong theatre.

Tonight we had another hour setback of the clocks which gave another extra night's sleep.