20231122 AAAA Trip - Sea Day - Timor Sea sailing

2023 Alaska, Asia, Australia, Arabian Peninsula Trip 
Day 67/105 - Sailing the Timor Sea

It's Wednesday morning and we're now at UTC+9:30, or 14.5 hours ahead of the US East Coast.  It sure seems strange to shift time 30 minutes off from the rest of the world.  Someone questioned where all does that so I looked.  Here's a great reference:

Half-Hour and 45-Minute Time Zones

By my count, 12 time zones are 30 minutes off UTC hours, and three are 45 minutes off.  Even goofier, there are a couple that only shift 30 minutes for daylight saving time rather than a whole hour.  Who knew?

We're in the Timor Sea today, sailing from Rinca Island, Indonesia to Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia.

We tried our hands at Baggo again today.  Arlona & I were on the same team and unfortunately finished in second place.  Yes, there are only two teams, and that's the same as last place or the losers, but I'm going with the plan that we finished in second place as silver medalists!

In trivia, we once again hit our sweet spot of one point shy of winning.  The misses that kept us out of the winner's circle:

• What is the first course called in a traditional Italian dinner?
• We guessed amuse bouche, but duh, that's French - it is antipasto - that was my fault
• What is the first country, alphabetically
• We came up with Albania - we forgot about Afghanistan
• Who wrote the song, Begin the Beguine?
• We guessed George Gershwin - it was Cole Porter
• Amanecer is the word for sunrise in which European language?
• We guessed Italian - it was Spanish
• What year was Mt. Everest first climbed?
• Our initial thought was 1952, but we thought earlier and went with 1923 - it was 1953

Oh well, we learned something.

We had more paperwork to do today - Incoming Passenger Forms for Australia.  It will be interesting to see how immigration goes tomorrow as we aren't typical on this trip.  We will disembark in Sydney on December 5 but will stay until December 12.  The instructions from the ship said to list ourselves as transit passengers but we filled it out for our entire stay in Australia.  We shall see tomorrow in the face-to-face immigration process.

We spent a relaxing afternoon, enjoying the veranda, nice breeze, and wave sounds.

The moon followed us this afternoon as we sailed southeast

Here's an interesting story.  My dad was one of four kids.  I know all my cousins from his two sisters as they all remained in the Midwest, at least through my youth. His brother, however, moved the family to California and we never really had any interaction with my three cousins after that.  The last time I saw them was my grandparents' 50th anniversary in 1968 (I think).  A couple years back, the oldest of the three contacted me.  She was coming to Florida from her home in Colorado and wondered if we would be there.  After 50 years, I reconnected with her and it was a great few days.  I was telling this story to a couple of Aussie friends we have met on this cruise.  I said that another of the cousins was in California somewhere and the third was somewhere in Australia.  They asked where, and I had no idea.  A little Facebook stalking later and I told them he was in Noosa Heads.  They let me know that Noosa Heads is a short drive from Mooloolaba - our port on December 2.  A few Facebook messages later and we're meeting up with my cousin in Mooloolaba for a burger and a beer after about 55 years.  How cool is that?  Watch for a cousin update on December 2.

After a couple pre-dinner libations, we headed to dinner. On the way, we caught the Sun's daily farewell.

It was World Map shirt night for us tonight

After dinner, the sky had transitioned into blues, pinks, and purples.

That loss of 90 minutes overnight seemed to really kick our butts today.  Since we had the opportunity to see tonight's show four times already on this voyage, we returned to the room for an early evening and an early bedtime.  We will be sailing until about 1 p.m. tomorrow when we will dock in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia.