January 29, 2026 Sea Day #9 final sea day to New Zealand
Today is the final Sea Day of the cruise travelling in the South Pacific Ocean to New Zealand’s North Island. The temperature was a bit cooler this morning at 23°C, wind east south east at 34 km/hr, 77% humidity and partly cloudy. The course of the ship was southwest 212° at 16 knots. The ship had returned to the Eastern Hemisphere at 9:04 p.m. yesterday evening.
We had breakfast in the dining room shortly after its 8 a.m. opening. Coffee with Robbie was in the World Stage theatre this morning at 9 a.m. Three dancers and two singers were interviewed this morning. The larger venue was required for this popular event. They have seven 45 minute shows that they perform, but only four or five are usually presented on any given cruise.
We started to walk on Deck 3, but the spray from the whitecaps was causing about one third of the starboard (right) side deck near the bow to be quite wet. [There are at least three decks below Deck 1, so we were about 19 meters above the water.] We decided to get our windbreakers and climb to Deck 10, the Sports deck, and walk up there. There were even areas of wet floor up there. When we checked our phone pedometers they read that we had climbed 42 floors during our walk even though we only climbed nine floors of stairs. The remainder of the floor count was the pitch of the ship up and down as we walked on a flat deck.
Steps 5,927
Steve Gray’s 11 a.m. talk, in the World Stage theatre, was called Polynesia in Cinema and Pop Culture: From Blue Hawai’i to Tiki bars to movie musicals pop culture shaped our image of paradise. Snippets from his presentation of how the world perceived Polynesian culture:
In 1958 in Fairbanks, Alaska, the Mecca bar opened as a Tiki bar
influenced by the owner’s military posting Hawai’i.
Humprey’s Half Moon Resort in San Diego in a high end resort with a Polynesian flavour
Tonga Room & Hurricane Bar in the Fairmont San Francisco
Pineapples are originally from South America. They were grown in Hawai’i as an additional crop to sugar cane. It was Spanish explorer Don Francisco de Paula Marin who took the novelty pineapple to Hawai’i in 1813. In 1901, James D. Dole started a commercial plantation bringing pineapple to the attention of the world. When a Dole engineer named Henry Ginaca developed the Ginaca machine the Dole brand became famous. The fruit could be sliced and canned and sold world wide. By hand 15 pineapples per minute could be sliced, the new machine could slice 35 pineapples and eventually improvements allowed 100 pineapples per minute to be sliced.
When the developer of Wikipedia was stumped for a name for his online encyclopedia, he saw a Hawaiian shuttle bus with the name Wiki Wiki Shuttle. Wiki mean quick so he used it in the name.
We climbed to Deck 9’s Lido Market to view the Cake Away display of two dozen or more cakes that people could sample. The Lido Market seating was quite full at lunch time, as was the seating in the outdoor pool area and in the indoor pool area.
The captain’s announcement at noon revealed that the ship has covered 783 nautical miles (nm) since Tonga, 468 nm in the past 24 hours and only 276 nm until we anchor by Waitangi, New Zealand. At noon the winds were strong at 35 knots (64 km/hr) or Force 8 on the Beaufort scale plus waves of 3.5 meters. Later in the afternoon the winds did lessen to 20 knots and the waves reduced to two meters.
Gerard Carney gave a talk at 2 p.m. Maori Contempt for their First Visitors: Play by the Rules! Abel Tasman briefly visited New Zealand in 1642, but it wasn’t until after 1770 when James Cook had charted 4,500 kilometres of the two largest islands of New Zealand coasts, that Europeans took notice of these South Pacific islands.
Other explorers visiting around the same time were French explorers:
Jean François Marie de Surville in December 1769 saw the northern part of the North Island when Cook was in the area but they never met or saw each others ships.
Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne in 1772, visited the Bay of Islands, at Assassination Cove, but tragically he and 24 crew were massacred and eaten by Māori, but the remaining crew brutally retaliated setting fire to the village before sailing away.
On February 6, 1840 the Treaty of Waitangi was signed near Waitangi in the Bay of Islands. The English version and translated Māori version have been debated about the interpretation since then. New Zealand became a British colony in 1841, attained self-government in 1854 and refused to join the Australian Federation in 1900. New Zealand covers approximately the same area as Great Britain.
Berny Barona, the travel guide, followed with the Port Talk about Waitangi and Tauranga. Waitangi is a tender port. One Canadian dollar is worth $1.21 New Zealand dollars. Waitangi Treaty Grounds admission fee in $74 NZ. Marsden Road is the main street. There is a shuttle into town but it is walkable. Last tender at 3:30. At Tauranga the ship is moored. Just a 350 meter walk to town. Mount Maunganui, or Mauao, is a 20 minute walk away but hiking trails are closed after the landslide one week ago. There is a rāhui in place at Mauao. The rāhui prohibits people from climbing the maunga (mountain) or swimming near it, due to an ongoing risk of further landslides and the search is still under way for those six missing people.
The ship is moored until 5 p.m. Classic Flyers Aviation Museum and Café will be about one hour walk. Admission fee $17.50NZ The Elms - Te Papa Tauranga is an historic site built in 1847. Admission fee $20NZ. A tour is required to go to Hobbiton, the location of the Hobbit town from the movie Lord of the Rings.
Dinner with Margaret and Ted followed by coffee. Then to the World Stage 30 minutes early to get seats for tonight’s show “Celtic Spirit” featuring the singers and dancers. It was another exceptional high energy 45 minute performance.
Total steps 10,931
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