DAY 19 APRIL FRIDAY 13-ROUGH AGAIN

The sun was shining but the ship was pitching. We watched rainbows in the splashing wake.

DAY 18 APRIL 12 - CALM DAY

Another fine day at the office.  Blue sky for the first time since Napier. The storm left thick salt on the deck.  The spider stowaway did not like that.

DAY 17 APRIL 11 WEDNESDAY-NICE DAY

We wandered around the main deck seeing pieces of rust in little piles everywhere.  Keeps the crew busy cleaning and painting.

DAY 16 APRIL 10 (AGAIN)GROUNDHOG DAY

Crossed the international date time.  Gained an hour and lost a day (or vv?).  We had a 47 hour day.
Weather was calmer but still windy, especially on the forecastle.  We stayed inside mostly and used the gym.

Also worked on a jigsaw

DAY 15 TUESDAY 10 APRIL- ROUGH SEA AGAIN

During the night the ship started pitching and rolling, and when we got up there was spray coming over the deck and right up to the Bridge deck. The swell was about 5 metres and we were feeling queasy again. We took a picture of the passengers.

The containers were very heavy, so they were not stacked as high and we had a good view forward from our window.

DAY 14 PACIFIC OCEAN-FAREWELL AOTEOROA

We met our three new fellow passengers. Pierre is a Swiss man of 78 who lives near Zurich and is returning home from visiting his daughter in Dunedin.  He booked through a German Agency who gave him all sorts of information which he shares with us as we go.  He used to teach French and German in Swiss High Schools (coincidence 1).
Chris and Ian are from Wellington NZ.  Ian lived in Palmerston North for nearly 30 years (coincidence 2).
They are going to London and will be riding their bikes (which are on the ship) following the rivers across Europe.  They plan to work their way around the world, possibly working in the ski fields in Austria (coincidence 3).  When they return home in two years they will be building a house on their country block of land, doing most of the work themselves (coincidence 4).  They are very jolly and give us lots of laughs.

Here are some photos that we took in Napier yesterday:

St Pauls Cathedral was nearly finished when the earthquake struck. This is the noticeboard outside.

Napier was rebuilt in the Art Deco style and this statue typifies the feel of the town. We climbed Bluff Hill and looked down on the Manet being loaded with onions.

We did not expect to see land for two weeks now and the sea was fairly quiet.  We saw our first flying fish today. Chris started us on a 1000 piece jigsaw. We listen to music on our itunes and watch a video most nights.

DAY 13 APRIL 8 EASTER SUNDAY NAPIER

We woke at 6am to watch the tugs docking the Manet in the only container berth in the Port. A huge number of logs were being loaded in the other berths. We were told that Napier exports millions of cases of apples in container each year.  They had forklift type cranes for moving the containers around and very high gantry type for loading them.

Hamish Jamison, the travel agent who arranged our trip met us with his wife at 9am and immediately gave us a tour of the city and shouted us a drink at the cafe.  He also signed us up on a German ship, the Aurora, to get us from Korea to Auckland on September 27.  We just need a ship from Aukland on October 12 or thereabouts to make it home on schedule.

Napier is the Art Deco capital of the world.  Most of the town was rebuilt in 1932-3 after the earthquake and fire of Febuary 1931.  We spent a long time in the Art Deco shop and bought postcards and a poster of a 1935 Ford V8.  We walked along the pebbly beach and up to Bluff Hill for a panoramic view of the Bay and town.  Pictures will be in our next.

From the top of the hill we zoomed in on this Volvo log handler which was attacking a humungous stack.