January 20, South Pacific Ocean

Bill in his usual perch

Calm seas with swells to 5'. Air temperature is 81 degrees with a sea temp. of 84 degrees. We are at S09 degrees 18.588' W170 degrees 01.614' at 15 knots with a heading of 200 degrees south.

Today is of course the 20th of January. At midnight tonight we will jump forward to the 22nd of January and will from then on will be a day forward of the rest of you at home. We arrive in Apia Samoa in the morning and can't wait to see land again. In all these sea days we have not seen on ship and not one slice of land. We had Kingman's Reef on our port side about 30KM out but it rises about 2' above the ocean so no go.

We at first cancelled our shore excursion for Sunday in favor of trying to find a bar with football but then realized that the Packer game will be on Monday for us at sea so reinstated the excursion. We expect to travel by bus for over an hour and then end up at "Return to paradise beach" a resort built and operated by the locals that provides continued employment in the area. We will have several hours of beach and lounge time. Hopefully we get some good beach walking in! We walk daily on the boat but we spend more time eating than we do walking.

Daily Water Volleyball Big Bill in the middle, on the deep end where it is normally very hard to touch.