It’s a quiet Friday evening, yes, I haven’t had another ‘moment’, the date is correct.  As we are about to cross the International Date Line, we put our watches forward last night by 24 hours.  The 28th January ceased to exist for us; we went to bed on the 27th and woke up on the 29th.  We have another clock change tonight, back 1 hour and then we’ll be on New Zealand time.

Apart from the business emails, I have been writing letters today. I haven’t put anything on the blog as yet, however I know it’s filtered through on some of the guest’s blogs, that we had an incident with a tender in Rarotonga.  No injuries, all is well except the tender suffered some fibreglass damage.  I’m still dealing with the paperwork and not in a position to write about it at the moment.

I have been replying to guest’s letters, a great number of them (and all positive, nice comments, I have to add).  I love writing; I have a collection of 7 fountain pens, heaven knows how may ink colours, nice stationary, blotting paper, in fact all the necessities.  I ‘seal’ my letters, using wax and have my ‘stamp’ too, it adds a nice, personal touch.

I used to use this type of sealing wax, however it involved lighting a wick and letting the wax drip onto the envelope before ‘stamping’ it.

This proved to be awkward, I would find myself leaving a trail of ‘drips’ and it never quite landed where I intended, including trousers, desk and carpet. 🙄   Not only that, the wick ‘smoked’ and I always had a dread that one day, one of our fire-fighting teams would enter my cabin with a fully charged hose  😉 

A solution had to be found and in fact, it turned out to be a simple one; I found they made sealing wax sticks that went into a glue gun, eureka!  No mess, no smoke and one could place the ‘dollop’ of wax exactly where one wanted to.

Sealing wax stick

Glue gun with stick in it

Take one’s stamp, (keep it on damp paper before use)

Apply wax liberally

Voila! A personalised seal

You ought to try it, it’s wonderful and your mail recipients would love it.  (No, I don’t have stock in any of the suppliers)  🙂

Some of you know that I wrote a book.  My father left us a short biography and I appreciated it.  I thought I would do the same for my daughters, who would then pass it on, (hopefully).  I’m trying to find time to edit it and add more, however failing miserably at the moment, not enough hours in the day, I’m sure I’ll get around to it eventually. I might try to put some extracts of it in the blog, some of my experiences are hilarious and we all need some humour in this day and age!

Well, I thought I would write something for you, these days at sea don’t provide much opportunity for photos. Incidentally, if there’s any part of the ship you would like to see in photos, let me know and I’ll try.  Areas like the Engine Room are difficult, (won’t fit in the camera lens).

858 miles to go before we reach Waitangi, Bay of Islands.  Some meetings and no doubt, more writing, a Captain’s dinner tomorrow night too.