Saturday, January 10, 2024

Sailing in the South Pacific toward New Zealand

Wishing you a year of prosperity, health and good fortune! Happy New Year!

Chinese New Year celebration is today’s theme on the Onward. It marks the start of the Chinese calendar and is widely celebrated around the world. There is an animal sign of the zodiac for each year and 2024 is the Year of the Dragon. Your zodiac animal is determined by the year of your birth and each animal has specific characteristics. Dragons like me are strong and independent, but yearn for love and support. Guess I fit the Dragon stereotype — is that profiling?

We enjoyed a very festive dinner on deck with two new friends from Denver, who we discovered only live a couple miles from us. Like so many of our fellow cruisers, they’ve been on numerous cruises all over the globe and especially favor Azamara Cruises.

Another calendar related event: overnight we crossed the International dateline and so we skipped a day — Poof it is SuperBowl Monday! It is just a little hard to wrap your head around the dateline time warp. Weirdly it seems arbitrary…well in a way it is!

The international date line, established in 1884, passes through the mid-Pacific Ocean and roughly follows a 180 degrees longitude north-south line on the Earth. It is located halfway around the world from the prime meridian — the 0 degrees longitude line in Greenwich, England. The international date line functions as a “line of demarcation” separating two consecutive calendar dates. When you cross the date line, you become a time traveler of sorts!