Holiday Cruise Part II

Greeting from the Pacific Ocean.

We are on our fourth sea day 1,511 miles west southwest of Los Angeles with 812 nautical miles to our next destination.  We will port in Nawiliwill (p. Nah Willy Willy) on the Hawaiian Island of Kauai on Wednesday.  For you Map Heads we are currently at Latitude 25° 04.81’ N and Longitude 144°15.87’ W.  The temperature at noon is 75°F as is the water temperature, and the seas, after three days of rockin’ and rollin’, are relatively calm.  Sunrise.

We have met some new friends and have shared meals with many.  We had dinner last night with Jamie and Dana Logan, who are the Cruise Director and Assistant Cruise Director, respectively, and we in the same positions when we took our World Cruise in 2006.  It was wonderful catching up with them.  They still work various cruises for Regent 4 months, take 3 months off to go back to their home in Traverse City, Michigan and then head out again.  Quite a life at sea.

We have two wonderful lecturers on board.  Eric Ball is a world-known geologist and historian who is filling us in about all of the islands on our trip, their history, founding, and formation.  We also have an ex-astronaut on board, Dr. Tom Jones, who has spent 53 days in space aboard three Space Shuttle flights on the Columbia, the Endeavor and the Atlantis.  He was the head of the geological crew who installed the geologic space lab on the International Space Station (ISS).  His photographs of the Earth from that lofty position in orbit are nothing short of amazing.  He has written three book and had articles published in National Geographic and other space-oriented magazines.  He is currently involved in the effort to identify exo-planets in our galaxy and beyond.  Exo-planets are those that are located in space and orbiting stars in the “Goldilocks” zone, where conditions are very similar to those on our planet.  Namely, able to support life as we know it.  So far 4,099 have been verified with over 40,000 more in various stages of being verified.  It is estimated that there could be as many as 40 billion earth-like planets in our own Milky Way Galaxy alone. Amazingly, so far, there have been 161 planets found and verified that are “identical” to Earth in every way. Think about that!

Hope you all are doing well and are looking forward to a wonderful holiday season.

Let us hear from you.

Jud and Vicki