Thursday, January 20th, 2005- Pacific Ocean

This evening we will pass through our second time zone which will allow us to get another extra hour sleep. Today was the first day at sea where we actually saw the sun and was calm for a while (granted it was for like an hour and only through breakfast).

Today was the first day of classes and they all went pretty well. Community College also began tonight. Basically each night there is a different presentation, which is optional for everyone to go to, on a topic that may be of interest to the shipboard community. Tonight’s presentation was given by the captain of the ship, Captain “Buzz” Radican. He basically went over the different aspects of the ship. Some information that I learned was:

- This ship was originally built to be fast and built to travel on the Mediterranean Sea.

- There is still threat of piracy at sea and last year there were over 400 instances of it. The MV Explorer has 4 fire house guns that is used to protect the ship by spraying water at 120 gallons a second.

- The ship produces it’s own water that is at a higher standard than what is on the mainland.

Another thing I learned today was that there is a 91 year old lady on the ship that has circumnavigated the world 19 times.