Wednesday

At sea

I woke up this morning to heavy overcast, rain and lightning in the distance. 

At about 8.30am our progress towards Pago Pago came to a sudden stop when a shudder went through the ship and forward motion rapidly slowed down. I thought we had hit something, such as a shipping container which sometime fall off ships and then float partially submerged as a hazard to other ships. The explanation turned out to more mundane; there was a problem with the flow of coolant through one of the engines and we stopped so that it could be properly fixed. I’m not sure I entirely believe the whole of that story, the ship stopped very suddenly and we had no explanation until the lunchtime announcement about noon position. 

I did think that as the ship sat unmoving in the water it might have been a good opportunity to put on my lifejacket and run through the public areas of the ship shouting ‘every man for himself!” but that would inevitably have led to me being put off the ship in Pago Pago.

Not much else to report for today; the overcast and occasional rain persisted all day. 

The ship has been pitching and rolling more today than since leaving Los Angeles; so all the passengers are weaving all over the place moving about, normally not too much of a hazard except when they are carrying hot food!. The pool on the top deck in the centre of the ship looks like a wave pool and any swimmers are getting tossed about like they are at the beach in a dumping surf.