Day 7 of Sailing (Wednesday)

I am beginning to loose track of the amount of days we have been sailing – I am sure it is day 7 of sailing and yesterday we were approximately 1000 miles from ANY land mass, Dad estimates we are below the Cook Islands.  There is talk that 2 days out from Mangareva there are some rocks and that the crew will do some trawling and are very much looking forward to it.  I must admit that I am looking forward to just seeing a piece of land … I thought that being in the outback on our bikes was isolated but being on this tiny ship in the big sea here is REALLY ISOLATED! Still haven’t seen a whale – Maurice did sea one on day 2 (while our heads were in the buckets).  Dad watched the Albatross (times 2) that we think are following us for the slop scraps from the galley!
Spent the morning outside on the third level calculating that I have just spent 5 days completely inside without going outside at all I can’t remember at any time in my life where I have not been outside for so long a period … maybe the longest could be 2 days … but 5! OMG!

Since the ship is going in an easterly direction it is pretty easy to locate north, south and west … NZ is somewhere out in this direction ….

And Pitcairn is somewhere in this direction ….

It was very nice soaking up a little Vitamin D this morning.  Still warm and relatively calm although there is a big low forming below us apparently … what that means who knows but from what I can understand is that it will be helpful!

Sitting up on deck I kept watch for whales although I saw none I did see a flying fish which no one else saw and Mum and Dad thought it was motion sickness drugs playing tricks on my mind …. But I hadn’t taken any this morning …. I am going to see if I can cope without them especially during the day.  I was taking  them first thing in the morning and again at night for sleeping but so far today I have been okay.
After a lot of ribbing from Dad that I was seeing things I did say that it was a bit like a big dragonfly and skimming across the water and even I in the end thought maybe I was seeing things … but later on Brenda came down and said that she saw flying fish and I asked her to describe it to me and funny enough she described it as a 12” dragonfly … ha Dad sure did have to apologise then!
Not much out there in the ocean and when a large piece of drift wood floated by wow the excitement of seeing that was just over welming! LOL crikey the salt air is getting to me!
Lunch was left overs and then Sharon and David did a little duet with their ukeleles … first it was the traditional island song ‘in the sweet bye and bye’ and they sang it to Mum and that just made Mum break out in tears … you can see in the photo that she always had to look away when David was singing it to her …

It is a lovely song and usually sang when people leave the island and I love it when I hear the islanders sing it and I have to admit that it does bring a tear to the eyes when you listen to the lyrics.

David and Sharon then went through the list of songs that Sharon can play and it was very funny listening to them as David sure knows how to entertain and make people laugh … even Mum was laughing in the end