So, we’re experiencing a couple new things, on our trip across the Pacific from Japan to Alaska. The first of which; we are changing time zones in 7 of the 8 days crossing at sea, at 1pm in the afternoon (not at night). More on that in a minute. The second is that we are crossing the international date line going east and get to live Thursday April 23rd, twice.

Sure, we’ve been changing time, springing forward or falling back, at night, all of our lives. And when you travel, you often have to change your clock to fit the location where you are, losing multiple hours in one adjustment. Actually, that is why we love traveling by ship as the time adjustments are gentler and usually only one every few days. But this mad dash across the Pacific has us adjusting every day. And those adjustments are coming in the middle of the day, at 1pm. So, you go from 12:59 to 2:00pm. We’ve been told that they are taking the time out of the middle of the day, as an experiment, to see if this is easier on the crew. Losing an hour of sleep, for 8 straight days, would not be good for them, or for us! Yet, this is takeing a bit of an adjustment for all concerned.

As for Thursday April 23, we get to spend it twice, due to crossing the International Dateline. Established in 1884, it provides a practical boundary to manage time differences, allowing nations to maintain consistent, unified calendars with their major trading partners. It is an imaginary, zigzagging line in the Pacific Ocean roughly along 180° longitude, marking where one calendar day changes to the next. When we crossed the dateline earlier in the trip, headed west, we lost a day. Now that we are traveling east, we gain a day.

It’s been fun to watch the ship manage the whole affair. Drew our Cruise Director refers to the first April 23 as April 23 A, and the second April 23 as April 23 B. Even the Princess Patter has two April 23 issues. This is real life ground hog day.

If you’re wondering how the passage is going, we’ve had some rough seas so far but not the worse that we’ve experienced. They’ve had to close the open deck 7 a couple of times, and the barf bags are out, but everyone seems to managing ok. The weather has turned dramatically colder and we even had some snow flurries yesterday.

Tomorrow: Thursday April 23, again, at sea, still.