January 31st, 2024

The last sea day before New Zealand remained rough until the very end of the day. The weather is cooler but still shorts weather and for the last sea day the sun came out and the seas calmed down around dinner time. We had a busy day trying to get everything in. We played Mah Jongg in the morning but a lot of people left early because the Captain and General Manager were doing a Q & A session and the art class, they have an art instructor and do classes at 10 and 2 every sea day, was having a showing of all the art they did during the last few weeks and we wanted to go up and see the art and support our friends who are doing art. This art is different from the felting and the gnome that Kathy made.

A lot of the folks doing art in a group photo and samples of their art was all over the room including fans, water colors of turtles, fold out cards and some sort of shadow boxes. Some of it was really good.

We spent most of the afternoon in the room and then we had a couple of gatherings early evening. One of the gatherings was a 21/22 cruise reunion and we were curious to see all the folks on board that were on the 21/22. Most we recognized but there were some that we did not know. There were about 50 people in the room and they also invited crew that had been on for the 21/22 also. It was nice and we got a group picture but having trouble uploading so will try again later. We did do a smaller group picture.

Our smaller group reunion photo

Very much looking forward to land on Thursday.

Next stop Feb 1st Waitangi, New Zealand in the Bay of Islands.