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| The Star Princess |
We had signed up for a whale watching tour this morning,
so we were up at 7. The ship was already
at anchor in the Lahaina harbor. After
having breakfast we met for our tour in the Princess Theater at 9. The boat didn't come for us until 9:45, at
least we didn't have to take the tender to shore, the whale watching boat came
to the ship and we boarded directly.
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| whale sighted |
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| Closer |
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| Ready to dive |
The boat took us out closer to Molokai and
Lanai. We saw whales in the distance and
later very close up. One mother brought
her calf up close to the boat. The calf
was riding on the mothers head. The naturalist
on board estimated that the calf was about a week old. Apparently the dorsal fin of the newborn doesn’t
stand up so the age of the newborn can be determined by how far the fin has
progressed toward a vertical position.
We had also learned in the onboard lectures that humpback whales never
have twins. We also learned that after
the mother gives birth there is a male that acts as an escort, protecting the
mother and calf.
When the mother whale brought her calf too near the
boat the escort came and moved them away.
He was quite active, showing his fluke as he dived. You have to be very quick to get a
picture. When taking pictures of whales
you get a lot more pictures of water than of whales.
Our whale watching tour lasted two hours and we disembarked
the boat on shore at Lahaina Town. We
had a snack at the Pioneer Inn and Gerri returned to the ship.
When we were in Lahaina last Sept/Oct of 2014 I did
a lot of geocaching and found many caches.
There were also some that I didn’t find.
One was at the site of the smokestack of the Pioneer Sugar Mill and one
was at the Cannery Shopping Center. The
smokestack was .4 miles away so I walked there and found the cache. I walked back to the harbor and finally
decided take a taxi to the cache at the Cannery Shopping Center which was about
a mile and a quarter from the harbor. The taxi driver waited while I found the cache
and signed the log. Back at the harbor I
caught the tender back to the ship. I
just happened to get to our room just before Gerri.
We spent some time in the Piazza using our MiFi to
access the internet. We participated in
the trivia quiz in the Explorer Lounge.
We really did poorly, 8 correct out of 20 questions. The best team got
14 correct answers.
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| Sunset over Lanai |
We cleaned up and got dressed for dinner. We went on
deck for the sail away but it got dark before the ship sailed, therefore we weren't able to see anymore whales. We went for hors d’ouvres on the Sky
Deck. We sat with a couple from Half Moon
Bay, CA that we had met earlier in the cruise and also a lady from the Oklahoma
City area. At dinner we were seated at a
table for 10. One of the ladies there was
the lecturer that had spoken about volcanoes and whales at earlier
presentations. One of the men also at our table had written a book about the Titanic
and lectured on several Princess cruises.
A lot of interesting conversation.
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| The ights of Maui |
After dinner we went to our room and read for a
while before retiring. The ship was
cooperating and rocked us to sleep.
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