Crossing the dateline with a monster at our heels

There have been many changes of plans these last few days. Mostly, it has concerned our sampling schedules and locations and I've felt very confused about it all.

In my previous post I mentioned that we might head to Fiji for shelter from the big storm coming our way. Apparently the storm has changed its predicted trajectory, now going in a southeasterly direction, straight over Fiji. A few days back it was supposed to pass west of Fiji.
So as the cyclone also picked up in intensity and size we made a run for it, heading east towards the dateline and Niue waters.
At this very moment the cyclone, now renamed "The Monster" - being the largest storm ever in this region, with wind speeds exceeding 240 km/h - have not yet reached Fiji.
We are presumably safe outside of Tonga but can still feel the waves getting larger and stronger, these past two days I've even had a hard time sleeping properly because of the increased rocking. By the time the Monster reaches our latitude we will be crossing the dateline, many degrees east of it.

I'm happy I'm not particularly superstitious though, because crossing the dateline, heading east, means that we will gain one extra day. In our case it actually means that we will have two friday the 13th. How many people could ever claim to have experienced that?

After that, we will reach our next long duration station (LD), in Niue waters, which is our only option. Thankfully, according to satellite imagery, it seems like we are sailing into a massive, and still expanding bloom. We have no idea what organism(s) make up this bloom, which spans several hundred kilometers in all directions. Of course, me and my colleague have our fingers crossed for DDAs.
Since this is a great opportunity for all of us to sample, we will make a 15 hours transect right through the bloom where we will conduct high profile sampling with most of the team involved. During these 15 hours we will be sampling for several parameters every 20 min from an underway surface water pump. Me and my colleague will also run the qPCR twice.