Day 32, Sailing south from American Samoa through the Pacific Islands

 We left American Samoa and was heading South, Southwest to New Zealand.  Tonga and Fiji are some of the islands we were near.  After we we took this picture, there was a pretty good storm with high winds that the Captain turned the ship eastward to try to make a little better.  Even the crew was saying that "she is rocking today."

While the ship won't switch over until Tuesday night (skipping Wednesday), since we did hit one part of the dateline today Rob and Toni broke out their new shirts.

One of the ship displays shows the mountains under the water.  We were in deep water along a mountain ridge that we would soon be over the top. It also shows it was 82 degrees outside and the wind, 31 knots (36 mph) that we were heading into.  Right after this, the ship turned to get around some of the storm we were getting into.

Todays was a Kiwi bird for our next stops in New Zealand

Wow, not sure we would like to be doing this much laundry! And this was just from a couple rooms!

Sunday Brunch had a Pasta Bar, a British Steak Pie and lots of other options

After Lunch was Sea Day Goofy Golf

Dinner was Chicken Noodle Soup and North Carolina BBQ in the middle of the South Pacific.

After dinner we sat out on the deck for awhile.  As the sun was setting, Rob pointed out Venus

Later he pointed out Venus (on the left) and Jupiter (on the right)

Later in the evening it was Mars.

Later looking at Orion (top arrow is at his belt, and he is upside down). And there is another group of stars in Taurus (the Bull that Orion is fighting) called  Pleiades (/ˈpliː.ədiːz, ˈpleɪ-, ˈplaɪ-/),[7][8] also known as The Seven Sisters (the bottom arrow). According to Greek mythology, The Pleiades are seven sisters: Maia, Alcyone, Asterope, Celaeno, Taygeta, Electra, and Merope.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades

Toni was able to zoom in while laying on the deck to get a good view of the Seven Sisters in the middle, 2/3 down the picture.

Here is how it looks on the star walk app

Later that night we went up on the top deck with Bill McKay, the Professor who is onboard.  He pointed out the stars like Rob had and then the Southern Cross. The Southern Cross is only seen below the equator.  And the North Star is only seen above the equator.  There is also two bright stars that point toward the southern Cross.

 

It was a full moon and as it was just coming out from behind a cloud, it made an almost rainbow around it.  It was a lot of fun looking at the stars.

But with all that, the best part of the night was right after we got up on deck and we were looking up at one of the stars and heard someone shout meteor! And we saw this yellow-orangish streak that then broke apart into multiple pieces and streaks across the sky.  Was all in about three seconds but was amazing.  The professor said that was probably the best meteor that he has seen in 20 years.  Unfortunately it was so quick that you couldn't take a picture or video.

Another day at sea tomorrow. It will be the last day before we skip a day.