Waves and waves

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8th February:

It's impossible to talk about today without talking about the weather. It is still seriously bumpy but the more you study the sea, the more you see in it. It is primarily a dark, cold midnight blue today but it gets broken into a vibrant spearmint green as the ship breaks it up and forces oxygen into it. The seas are huge today but the Captain reminded us that Hawaii is famed for its surfing beaches and out here is surely the birth place of those giant rollers.

When two waves collide (which happens about once every few seconds), they explode into the finest mist which instantly transforms into an airborne rainbow. It's so easy to see how ancient civilisations saw gods in all this nature. Surely something cleverer than mankind paints a million rainbows in salt water.

The horizon is also an interesting place to keep your eye on. When it appears flat, you're probably having a good time. But when it's jagged you've either already had a rough time, or are currently having a rough time or know you'll soon be having a rough time! And then when the weather is so intense that it obliterates the horizon, you start to dream of docking against solid land!

The good news is that the sun is shining, the sky is blue and the Captain tells us we'll get into flat water around 4am as we turn into the Hawaiin archipelago. It's hard to believe that we are so far away from any civilisation out here and yet our next port will take us to see Pearl Harbour. It's such an iconic place and I know the Americans regard it with intense reverence. Most ports are mad keen to try and part their cruise tourists from at least some of their money and it will be interesting to see if this one is an exception. Or not.

With 4 days at sea under our belt now, we've been doing a serious dollop of people watching and it's fascinating to see how the passenger community has changed along the way. Sailing from the UK to the USA was wall to wall Brits. New York to San Fransisco we kissed goodbye to half the Brits and replaced them with New Yorkers. Now many of them have left the ship and we have many more Japanese and Germans on board. You can almost guage the wealth of the world by the Cunard customer base. And with a horribly broad brush of generalisation, I observe that many Japanese are a total law unto themselves ignoring just about any rule that Cunard care to put on a notice whether it's wearing jeans to gym or grabbing handfulls of chocolate from the display at the end of dinner and snaffling them into serviettes stuffed into pockets and handbags. The Germans have two challenges: one is that the sunbeds are guarded fiercly by the deck staff and any towel lingering without a sunbather for more than 30 minutes is removed! Their second challenge is learning to grow old gracefully. Which they appear to be failing to do right now! The de rigeur colour scheme is cream and gold - hair, clothes, shoes, bag, face, nails and then drape as many brand names as you can possibly display on one body. Money? Definitely. Class? Definitely not!!

And with that surreptitious swipe across two entire nations I'm now off to the great British obsession: food!

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