Update 2: Position 20°26 (N) 167°57′ (W)3190 nautical miles to next port in Kobe Japan
There’s darkness and then there’s being on a ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean where looking out from the deck all you see is inky blackness. No shadows, twinkly lights, airplanes. Just the dark. I wonder if that’s what it is like in space!?
Today is A4 (aka Sunday 14th). We left Hawaii on Friday 12th about 11pm. We started to pull in to port about 6am, had our various field excursions, and sailed out again at 11pm. We are now sailing the long, 10 day, leg to Kobe in Japan. The morning after we left we heard about the mistaken ‘missile’ alert that was sent out in Hawaii when someone hit the wrong button!
Hawaii was the last port where the US cell phones work, including my own mobile cellular data. So I was out on deck at 6am, in the dark, ready to try and phone home since there’s a 10hr time difference. There were already a couple of people out and apparently they’d been able to get reception from about 5.30am. I called home, on skype from the deck, a mile offshore! Isn’t technology sometimes amazing?
By sunrise the deck was full of cell phones. For the next 3 hours before we all left for field class and programmes I saw hundreds of students wandering around the ship facetiming parents….”and this is the restaurant”…
We then had to clear immigration. We all get called to the main hall (the Kaisersaal) in groups to file past the border agents and get individually checked. Amazingly we were all cleared by 9am and I met with my field studies group to board our field trip bus. One of my classes is Supply Chain Management and I wanted to see supply chains ‘in action’ plus get some background on this industry for my own research. So I arranged to look at the Chocolate Supply Chain in Hawaii!
We started at a cacao farm, 21 degrees. Here we say the cocoa growing, and their sustainability approach. We got the background to the industry here in Hawaii and how this differs from elsewhere in the world. Seemingly the sugar industry collapsed in Hawaii in 2015 and pineapples are also struggling. Cacao is seen as a possible new niche market, for high-end regional cacao in Hawaii and elsewhere in the USA and internationally.
The farm was incredibly beautiful, and even through the cacao was planted less than 3 years ago it is already producing good quality pods. Though I think some of the students found the best bit getting to cuddle the miniature goats!
The factory we visited, Manoa, is one of the new wave of bean-to-bar chocolate firms who make high-quality artisanal chocolate. It’s a bit like speciality wine – it has regions and seasons and a ‘vintage’. It doesn’t always taste the same, unlike commercially produced chocolate. They use only cane sugar and most of the ones we saw were 70%+ cacao. We watched the whole process from the seed through to the final tempering. Then came the highlight. We had a chocolate ‘tasting’ - 14 different types from lavender to a 100% cacao (I didn’t like that one!)
I had so many requests from faculty on board to bring back chocolate I decided to get a sample box and on our long voyage to Japan we are having a chocolate tasting!
There’s darkness and then there’s being on a ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean where looking out from the deck all you see is inky blackness. No shadows, twinkly lights, airplanes. Just the dark. I wonder if that’s what it is like in space!?
Today is A4 (aka Sunday 14th). We left Hawaii on Friday 12th about 11pm. We started to pull in to port about 6am, had our various field excursions, and sailed out again at 11pm. We are now sailing the long, 10 day, leg to Kobe in Japan. The morning after we left we heard about the mistaken ‘missile’ alert that was sent out in Hawaii when someone hit the wrong button!
Hawaii was the last port where the US cell phones work, including my own mobile cellular data. So I was out on deck at 6am, in the dark, ready to try and phone home since there’s a 10hr time difference. There were already a couple of people out and apparently they’d been able to get reception from about 5.30am. I called home, on skype from the deck, a mile offshore! Isn’t technology sometimes amazing?
By sunrise the deck was full of cell phones. For the next 3 hours before we all left for field class and programmes I saw hundreds of students wandering around the ship facetiming parents….”and this is the restaurant”…
We then had to clear immigration. We all get called to the main hall (the Kaisersaal) in groups to file past the border agents and get individually checked. Amazingly we were all cleared by 9am and I met with my field studies group to board our field trip bus. One of my classes is Supply Chain Management and I wanted to see supply chains ‘in action’ plus get some background on this industry for my own research. So I arranged to look at the Chocolate Supply Chain in Hawaii!
We started at a cacao farm, 21 degrees. Here we say the cocoa growing, and their sustainability approach. We got the background to the industry here in Hawaii and how this differs from elsewhere in the world. Seemingly the sugar industry collapsed in Hawaii in 2015 and pineapples are also struggling. Cacao is seen as a possible new niche market, for high-end regional cacao in Hawaii and elsewhere in the USA and internationally.
The farm was incredibly beautiful, and even through the cacao was planted less than 3 years ago it is already producing good quality pods. Though I think some of the students found the best bit getting to cuddle the miniature goats!
The factory we visited, Manoa, is one of the new wave of bean-to-bar chocolate firms who make high-quality artisanal chocolate. It’s a bit like speciality wine – it has regions and seasons and a ‘vintage’. It doesn’t always taste the same, unlike commercially produced chocolate. They use only cane sugar and most of the ones we saw were 70%+ cacao. We watched the whole process from the seed through to the final tempering. Then came the highlight. We had a chocolate ‘tasting’ - 14 different types from lavender to a 100% cacao (I didn’t like that one!)
I had so many requests from faculty on board to bring back chocolate I decided to get a sample box and on our long voyage to Japan we are having a chocolate tasting!