Ship's time for sea days following IDL crossing?

[bigwally]

We have 4 sea days on our Transpacific before reaching our first Alaskan port (Kodiak), following an eastbound IDL crossing. Could someone who's done same on HA (or any other line for that matter) tell me what "ship's time" is likely to be for each of those days?

 

My assumption would be that we'd cross the dateline at the pointy bit farthest to the west and change the hour gradually over the 4 days, until we're finally on AKST.

 

Bonus points if you can provide the times directly from copies of the daily program you've hung onto! :)

[fishywood]

Please forward bonus points to Cruise Critic member rafinmd for archiving the Reflections (daily programs) from Crystal Symphony's Kobe to Vancouver (via Dutch Harbor) Transpacific cruise:

 

https://angkorwatmyway.wordpress.com/programs/reflections/

 

The ship's clock moved an hour forward for four consecutive nights to get from Russian time to Aleutian time. The date after leaving Petropavlovsk--two and three nights prior to arriving at Dutch Harbor--was repeated twice.

[new_cruiser]

Prior thread on ocean crossing time and date changes:

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2559830&highlight=dateline

 

It did seem that there are some variations so you might also want to ask on the specific cruise line board.

 

The most common was to add an hour during the night when going west and delete an hour during the day when going east but that wasn't universal though there were also reports of deleting an hour at night.

[new_cruiser]

We have 4 sea days on our Transpacific before reaching our first Alaskan port (Kodiak), following an eastbound IDL crossing. Could someone who's done same on HA (or any other line for that matter) tell me what "ship's time" is likely to be for each of those days?

 

My assumption would be that we'd cross the dateline at the pointy bit farthest to the west and change the hour gradually over the 4 days, until we're finally on AKST.

 

Bonus points if you can provide the times directly from copies of the daily program you've hung onto! :)

 

Looking at the Voledam itinerary, I see 6 sea days (5 calendar days plus one duplicated crossing the dateline), not 4. There are 7 hours of time change.

 

Off topic: what are you planning to do in Hakodate and Kushiro? My cruise has stops in both about 10 days after yours and I haven't figured it out yet.

Edited February 14, 2018 by new_cruiser
Correct time difference - it's 6 hours now, but 7 hours during the cruise because Japan doesn't do Daylight savings time

[bigwally]

Looking at the Voledam itinerary, I see 6 sea days (5 calendar days plus one duplicated crossing the dateline), not 4. There are 7 hours of time change.

 

Off topic: what are you planning to do in Hakodate and Kushiro? My cruise has stops in both about 10 days after yours and I haven't figured it out yet.

 

Yeah, I was specifically looking at the 4 days following the crossing, which is actually 5 days because I didn't know/realize that the one day was revisited. I'm still a little foggy about IF ship time will emulate the time for the Aleutian Islands as we get close to them though.

 

Both Japanese ports we're just going to get off and wander round a bit.

 

Hakodate, I'm very much hoping the cherry blossoms are in full swing (though we might be just a few days too early), so we'll visit Goryokaku Fort to see those. Then probably go to the top of Mount Hakodate using the ropeway. And I'm also thinking it might be fun to go see the monkeys at the Tropical Garden. Beyond that I'm not sure.

 

Kushiro, I know that the EGG, Nusamai Bridge, and the Flower Clock are on our list to see (since they're all fairly close together), but I haven't really gotten any further with that port yet.

[new_cruiser]

Your itinerary shows you at sea for days 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 with day 4 duplicated due to crossing the date line. That makes 6 days for the crossing (minus 7 hours so more like 5.7 days).

 

I'm pretty sure that they will just do the time adjustment spread out through the days. That's what others have reported for ocean crossings. That probably means doing a two hour shift one of the days and one hour for each of the others. It's unlikely that they will care what time it is on land until they make port in Kodiak. Alaska bumps its time zone pretty far to the West to cover much of the Aleutions - no reason for the ship to accelerate shifting its time to match that.

 

The Voledam itinerary puts the dateline crossing day as the first one out of Japan. The dateline jogs around a bit for local convenience, but it's about half way between Kushiro and Kodiak so you aren't going to be crossing it on the first day. That's an indication that they don't feel a need to match time on the land they are sailing near but not visiting . Windstar Star Legend is going to take 8 calendar days getting from Kushiro to Seward (I guess it sails slower) and puts the dateline crossing on the 4th day, closer to where we will be crossing it.

[bigwally]

We ended up with one hour at 9am on each of the sea days plus an extra hour at 2am on the fourth sea day (so we lost two hours that day).