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New Zealand Trip |
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07 Dec 2003 - Depart Los Angeles en route to New Zeland 1049 - Just came in from a walk about. We sailed from Los Angeles about 0530 this morning and I was up on top to watch it. It was interesting to see the LA harbor from this perspective. For years, I saw it from atop the two harbor bridges as I went to and fro from Long Beach to San Pedro. The harbor is huge. Where the ship was dock, it extended as far as I could see. The Vincent Thomas bridge was visible off in the distance like a toy. The Direct Tui was docked at berth 305 in the APL dock area. After watching our departure, I went back to bed and then got up again to go to breakfast at 0730. Meals here at set at 0730, 1200 and 1800. No officers were present but a passenger put in an appearance which surprised me as I had decided I was probably going to be the only one on the LA to NZ leg. We were the only ones at breakfast. I haven't learned much about him yet but his name is John and he seems like he's in the 50 to 60 range. Intelligent and nice. He said he's from the Santa Barbara area and I gathered that this was not his first freighter cruise. He's in the other single cabin which is forward facing on D deck. He said the containers are not stacked so high as to prevent his view. He's on for the entire tour from LA and back to LA. He'll be staying on the ship in NZ to go on the Australia leg while I jump off. After breakfast, I taught myself how to shoot 35 second movie clips with the camera which is a very cool feature. I saw a short movie my son ,Dan, made with their camera and it was neat. Then, I went outside and shot some outside stuff and then some more here in the cabin. For information on the QuickTime movies used on this web site click here. As I said, I just went for a walk around the ship. The sea and sky are steel gray with banks of fog scattered around. I think it'll burn off soon. We were just passing San Nicholas Island on the Starboard side when I was out. That's the last of the Channel Islands so it's open sea from here on. Swells are coming from the west and we're heading almost due west straight into them so the ship is rising and falling on its long axis. From the bow, you can look over and see the ship cutting into the sea as it gets into and out of synchronous rhythm with the approaching swells. When everything times out just right, it will rise up just as a big swell passes under and then fall deeply into the trailing trough. I like to be on the bow then feeling the motion. At 1008, we were at 33.03N and 119.07W. When I was up on the bow enjoying the motion, the ship's fog horn went off behind me. They sound it every five minutes or so and I'd forgotten it. Whew. I almost had to call for my brown pants (inside joke for some readers) on that one. I've organized the papers from my wallet. Charge slips, phone numbers and etc. so I can forget that stuff until at least NZ. I brought back a diskette drive from Fry's yesterday for the ship's e-mail computer. After lunch, I'm going to go to the Captain's off and install it. He told me last night that there's another problem with it that concerns the link from the computer to the satellite phone box. I'm going to check that out. He said he's replaced the I/F card in the PC (an HP Vectra - looks like PII vintage) but it didn't help. A quick look at the card makes me think it is a serial I/F card with two channels. We'll see. 1738 - We're at 31.28N, 121.16W. We've come 242 miles from Los Angeles Harbor. I've just returned from spending an hour and a half working on the Captain's e-mail computer. And all to no avail. We physically swapped out the diskette drive but then he recounted a conversation with their tech support in which they asserted that the wiring to this system's floppy was non-standard. And, when we looked, both drives had the same connector type but the new drive had less pins. In the end, we decided to not chance it. Then we worked on the other problem. He told me that the e-mail was working after he left Tauranga and then that evening he got a message saying that the PPP <something> was failing to connect. Later, after numerous attempts, the message changed and said h/w failure. He was sent a new serial I/O card and he plugged it in but had the same result. When his system boots, it complains about a missing DLL entry point which I think is related to Norton Virus. It also reports that at least one driver or service failed - see the event log. The event log shows that the serial ports are tangled. We tried various things but nothing helped so in the end, we accomplished nothing. I gather that the central office sets up the systems and they don't share a lot of information with the Captain re: how it is done. The ship's been rocking and rolling more than I thought a ship this size would. It should be fun if we get any real weather. Thus far, it is temperate outside and gray for the most part. The seas have scattered white caps and we are getting large swells occasionally. |