Monday, January 30, 2023 – Day 40 – At Sea Tuesday, January 31, 2023 – Day 41 – At Sea
‘Way out west, they got a name,
For rain and wind and fire
The rain is Tess, the fire’s joe and
They call the wind Marīa‘
When I was very young, my mom played lots of records during the day. The Lerner and Loewe song, They Call the Wind Mariah, from ‘Paint Your Wagon’ is one I remember vividly. As a child, the song sounded like adventure; the wind being such a big part of the adventure that it had a name! I wanted to be “… way out West”. I longed to live during the time we were ‘taming the west’. I wanted to travel by covered wagon and stake my claim in some new territory! Then I got a little older and realized they didn’t have showers and flush toilets… a dream dashed!
I’ve always loved the wind, not it’s destructive nature, but the feel of the freely blowing wind has always calmed me. I know I’m in the minority when it comes to liking the wind. But, for me, I feel God’s presence in the wind. I’ve found His peace in a gentle breeze, His prompting in a steady wind, and His power in the mighty wind that howls here at sea.
Today, as a traveler on that sea, the wind is a huge factor in where we can, and can’t, go. When we have plans to anchor rather than dock in a port, we take a small tender from the ship to the port, if the wind whips up the sea it isn’t safe to transport passengers this way. So….. the plan for our first stop in New Zealand at Waitangi, The Bay of Islands, was to anchor and tender ashore… yup, it was a no go. The wind wasn’t going to let up, so the captain made the call to cancel that port and head to our next port, Auckland, arriving the next afternoon. The wind was still howling, and we were all crossing our fingers that we could get into this port. After 5.5 days at sea we really wanted to get to land! With the aid of two powerful tugboats, we were guided into port and docked safely.
We slowly got into position to tie up. Jeff supervising the maneuver.
While there was no ‘rescue’ necessary, it was amazing to watch the powerful tug ‘o war take place!
Now we have 3 days and 3 nights to explore Auckland, New Zealand! If the rain will stop and the clouds lift, it should be beautiful!
Did you know?… In the 1941 novel Storm, George Rippey Stewart named the protagonist of the story Maria, with the emphasis on the second syllable because, he said, “The soft Spanish pronunciation is fine for some heroines, but our Maria here is too big for any man to embrace and much to boisterous. So put the accent on the second syllable and pronounce it ‘rye'” Stewart’s book was a success and was one of the factors that motivated U.S. military meteorologist to start the informal practice of giving women’s names to storms in the Pacific during WWII. The practice became official in 1945. In 1953, a similar system of using women’s names was adopted for North Atlantic storms. In 1979, men’s names were incorporated into the system.