October12 came twice this year   We crossed the International Date Line.  In her morning announcement our cruise director, Karlijn, said that we seldom have a chance to do a day over. We should do this one over with random acts of kindness. The captain called this “Groundhog Day” in his announcement.

The dateline is not kind to electronic devices. My poor computer didn’t want me to change the date.  It kept defaulting to October 13.  I finally had to change the time zone from UTC +12 to UTC -12.  That convinced it to flip dates.  My iPhone was a little easier to convince. Some of my cruise mates lost all the mail they had collected that morning before they changed their computer dates.  They hope it comes back when the computer flips over to October 13.

The Holland America Navigator App is hopeless.  On Friday September 13, the day we lost going westbound, it could not just drop the day but told us we were on a land excursion.

It flat out refused to repeat our second October 12.  There was an announcement that we needed to reboot the program to make it tell us the events on the second October 12.  I had to reboot it twice and the phone once before it gave me the correct information. But it still insisted that I had a reservation at a specialty restaurant from the night before.  I could not get the app to delete it.  I ended up calling the front desk and was on hold for nearly 20 minutes.  Apparently other people had phantom reservations that they didn’t want as well.  When I finally got through, I was assured that I did not have, and would not be charged for the extra meal. But at 5:45 my phone pinged, and I was reminded to attend to my appointment.  I was not the only one.  One of our dominos companions also was reminded of a phantom appointment.

Double booking reservations is not the only problem the poor app has.  It tends to run hot.

As we change time zones, we are subtracting the extra hour mid-day and not mid-night, losing an hour of activity rather than an hour of sleep.  Karlijn counts down starting at 12:59:50, the ship’s horn sounds, and we all reset our watches.

Sometimes that also confuses the app.

I have not written much about sea days.  We were scheduled to have 11 consecutive sea days.  That was reduced to 10 because we had to make way quickly to Honolulu because of an ill passenger.  (Because of my history on the 2023 world cruise I got concerned messages “It isn’t you, is it?”)  

Today we should have cruised by Midway Island but we passed about 230 miles south of it.  The captain came on when we were in that position and urged us all to look north and take a moment of reflection on the sacrifice and the cost of war.

I have not been as active these sea days as I usually am.  The time in Japan was intense and I found I needed more time to process the experience, write, think, read books about the history and culture (or reread portions with better understanding), and sort pictures.  I did attend some (but not all) of the lectures, swam my laps, played Mexican Train Dominos and, of course, ate.  

I spent a lot of time outside reading, thinking, listening, and admiring sunrises, sunsets, moon dogs and the moon on the water.

I also enjoyed watching the sun play off of the side wake of the ship, as the waves caught the breeze and sun at the same time creating prisms of light, and at one point, a rainbow with no rain is sight.

I love sea days and, unlike some of my co -cruisers, am not anxious for landfall. I like the rhythm of sea life and am enjoying these days. I am happy to have an extra October 12.