The other side of the line

0º 18.289s 125º 36.121w

Tue Apr 30 2019

Not terribly long after we were married, Isabel and I traveled to London to visit friends and family. Her dad Paul had given me the book Longitude; it’s about the development of the chronometer. The contest was sort of like a DARPA challenge - a King’s ransom, I think 10,000 pounds, was offered for a device that could keep highly accurate time even in a ship’s motion environment. Important because one needs to know exactly what time it is to associate with a sextant sighting and precisely calculate their longitude. Apparently his royal highness was a bit tired of British Navy vessels running aground in poor visibility conditions, simply because they were lost. It’s a great read.

Anyway, Isabel’s dad Paul accompanied me to Greenwich for a day tour of the royal observatory and surrounding sights. He took my picture standing with one foot on each side of the Prime Meridian. Fascinating place to visit and a fun day out. I felt a little wiser afterwards, partly from the realization that the only reason zero degrees longitude is defined there is because the English solved the problem first. It’s an arbrtrary line in the sand, unlike the equator.

Just after midnight, Isabel awoke me from a deep slumber, and then she wandered off to roust Thad. At about 21 minutes after midnight local ship’s time we sailed across the equator at a longitude of 125 degrees 21.191 minutes West. North became South. We took pictures of the chart plotter with a bunch of zeros in the latitude field. We congratulated and toasted one another and King Neptune with some very fine sipping tequila, Don Julio 70 Cristalina. The bottle is a gift from our dear friends Ralph and Helen Marx on SV Moondrifter, another Seawind 1160 and a sister ship to JollyDogs. We threw in a toast to Posidon for good measure.

Thad’s not drinking these days, so his share of Don Julio went into the drink to pay homage, to honor and thank the sailing gods for our passage thus far, and to ask for continued safe passage to Nuka Hiva. We felt like we were supposed to put on some sort of performance, but we’re not real theatrical folks. Most importantly we acknowledged one another’s love and friendship. By then it was just about time for
Thad’s watch, so I returned to bed and Isabel soon joined me.

I came on for the 0400 - 0700 slot. Made a cup 'o Joe and sat out under the stars. Saw a shooting star, made a wish. Looked for the Southern Cross, but couldn’t make it out. Checked myself with the Skyview app on Isabel’s iPhone. Looks like it’s out of calibration, but it’s a totally cool way to look at the sky and learn the constellations. It even includes a ton of satellites and spent rocket boosters just flopping around in space. You wouldn’t believe the space junk out there.

What’s important to us is that we just sailed under wind power on a tiny boat in the middle of the freakin’ huge Pacific ocean across a line that marks the mid point between the North and South poles. We’ve dreamed of this moment for a long time.

I guess we’ve technically made the transition from PollyWog to ShellBack, although our ceremonial initiation sure wasn’t up to my brother Kirk’s US Navy standards. Gravity still feels the same, and I can’t sense any difference in the magnetic field. Perhaps I’ll go flush the toilet and see if it swirls in the opposite direction. . .