Water

It’s been a long time since the last update. Not for lack of things to show and tell, but rather for a
virus. Electronic, not biological, and (hopefully) our computer has recovered with no
catastrophically ill consequences, but it’s been a very trying and scary time on the high seas. And the only picture of the adventure, that of Phil hunched over the computer with a very frustrated and sour look, is not fit for these pages. We did perform a full (hopefully) backup prior to leaving home, so as we find files one-by-one that got deleted in the recovery Bryan has been able to email them. The file that is necessary to download pictures from the big camera was discovered a minute ago to be one such file, so the pictures from Honolulu will have to wait for the next update. The little camera utility was not affected, so we do have something to show.

The ship has stabilizers, wings that can be deployed from each side of the ship below the
waterline, actively controlled so as to damp lateral motion of the ship. Because the ship is
narrower than it is long, this lateral movement would be more pronounced than longitudinal
movement, and thus more unpleasant to the fat cat paying passengers, and thus bad. Before
hitting Honolulu we were sailing in a west-south-westerly direction, with winds and swell from
the north-west. This gave us a quartering swell. With essentially full lateral damping and little
longitudinal, the ship bounced at about 70% of what the swell was trying to impart.

Now we are sailing almost due south, and the winds have backed around to northerly, so almost
all the wave action is transmitted to the ship. So the ship is pitching fore and aft fairly slowly,
and motion felt by humans, as least those we know aboard, is hardly felt.

We have two swimming pools, and two jacuzzis. Both pools are aligned with the ship, with the
long dimension running fore and aft, and the short dimension side to side. The larger pool is
outside, where we have spent most of the last week.

The water is, of course, constrained by the edges of the pool, but not rigidly attached thereto.
Water, given it’s druthers, would rather stay still. So we now have a pool that is rocking fairly
slowly through many degrees of deflection, and water that would rather not. When in the pool
with eyes open, the visual reference is the sides of the pool, and it appears the water is sloshing
about rather vigorously fore and aft. However, when floating in the pool with eyes closed, the
only motion felt is a slight up and down. Until you float too close to the constraining pool end -
ouch. Great fun, and a source of many hours of enjoyment by a few hardy souls.

The last picture is left to the reader’s imagination.