Here comes Mr. Equator!

1º 34.588n 124º 53.998w

Mon Apr 29 2019

My turn for the 0100-0400 watch. Dark as pitch out there. A sliver of moon will rise in about an hour. There’s a glow on just below the horizon to port; at first I thought it must be a big cargo ship all lit up, but there’s no AIS target on the chart plotter so I’m betting it’s a very bright star or planet just below the horizon.

My brother Kirk is a US Navy veteran. Four years active duty, thirty something in the reserves. Retired as a Senior Chief Petty Officer, and looked great in his dress uniform. A couple days ago I whipped out the satellite phone and called him to consult about the proper ceremony for a first equatorial crossing. He did it on the aircraft carrier USS America.

One is known as a “pollywog” until sailing across the equator. After a suitable initiation which includes paying appropriate homage to King Neptune, one is transformed into a “shellback”. I guess we’re going to have to improvise, because Kirk noted that we needed a shellback on board to oversee the ceremony. Today, Isabel, Thad and I are all pollywogs. I’ve searched high and low, and unless we have a really clever stowaway, we’re all we’ve got to work with.

Kirk’s initiation ceremony involved some rather unsavory activity. He was forced to brush his teeth with axle grease, crawl through mountains of sour garbage, kiss the greasy belly of a Master Chief Petty Officer, and got blasted by a salt water fire hose. There was more, but by then my head was spinning. Back in the 70’s the US Navy took this pretty seriously, but I suspect they’ve let up a bit since then what with all this kinder gentler stuff.

Our current latitude is 1 degree 39.5 minutes, and we’re pushing South to get to more favorable wind and sea conditions before pointing more to the West towards the Marquesas and our initial destination of Nuka Hiva. At our present speed we should encounter the equator in about 19 hours, so sometime late tonight we’ll do our little thing and declare ourselves shellbacks. It’ll likely involve our rapidly diminishing rum soaked fruit cake (courtesy of Behan GIfford), perhaps a wee dram of rum or tequila, and some profound words. We’re all out of costumes. Apparently we have to appease King Neptune, so we might spill a little rum over the side for him, but I sure hope he isn’t terribly thirsty.

Tomorrow we’ll be different people. Shellbacks! Arrrrrgh, matey!

Hey! We love hearing from you! Email us at: jollydogs@myiridium.net

Also, if anyone has any intel on meteor showers in our region we wou.d love to have the details!