Noon Position: N 03° 05.46′, W 154° 53.85′

Speed: 16.0 knots, Course: 170º

It was high winds and occasional spitting rain (or was it salt spray?) this morning – made the deck 2 outing quite interesting.

After breakfast I had a last bit of homework to finish before tomorrow’s meeting so we skipped the first lecture, “Vikings on the Move.” We’ll catch the replay on the TV (or not, we’re so bad!).

I did get done in time to hit the 11:00 which is a good thing because our resident anthropologist talked about “Politics and Religion in Ancient Polynesia” Fascinating stuff and she did a good job of covering from the earliest settlement to the demise of the Rapanui (Easter) Island culture.

After lunch we moved to the pool deck and staked out a place for the 2:00 Equator Crossing Ceremony.

Speaking of masks, I’m not sure if I mentioned, yesterday word came down from corporate that employees are no longer required to wear a mask. It’s really great to see actual smiles not hidden by those masks. Or maybe they’re just smiling after having to wear masks ever since they started sailing again.

OK, back to the ceremony. Next the pollywogs were paraded. These were the crew members who have never crossed the equator before. They passed by the fish and saluted it (rather than kissing it), drank a shot of aquivit, and assembled around the pool.

Charges were read against each represented department. (Examples included; “The pollywog bartender team came up with a new drink – Vodka, Orange Juice, and Milk of Magnesia. They called it a Philips Screwdriver.” “The pollywog deck crew are so enthusiastic about their work that they have been known to polish the bald head of a sleeping guest.” “Housekeeping pollywogs were so conscientious that a new couple coming on board found prior passengers still in their room. The bed was so tightly made that they couldn’t get up.” and “One pollywog nurse commented on a guest’s slice of flank steak that a good vet could revive it.” and “Housekeeping is also responsible for cleaning the bridge. However they are so thorough that they cleaned all the grease pencil markings from the white board and we no longer know where we are going.”

After charges were read for a department the guests would shout their verdict (you know how this goes, right?), and the judges would confirm the verdict, and the offending crew members would dive into the pool.

Once all crew members had been initiated the guests were invited to participate.

And dived (sort of) in the pool.

SIDE NOTE: Returning to our stateroom later that evening (after BBB) we found:

Back to our story:

After we had been properly initiated we got cleaned up and down to the Theatre for the Bora Bora port talk. We’re not there until Sunday but that’s the first of 4 successive port days so they’re getting a head start. Looks like we’ll have a “full and complete” day. But more on that later.

The 6:30 lecture was a look at people who have “escaped” to the south pacific.

BBB tonight was as ever – 9 out of 18.

Tonight’s choice of question from the list is: What did Bartolomeo Cristofori de Francesco invent?

• No fair looking it up.
• Please don’t post your answer in a comment. E-Mail or text me and I will announce the winner.

Finally I sat down to work on the blog. I battled spotty internet access but eventually got the shot I was looking for:

For reference, latitude -0.0005 is about 180 feet. So depending on where a stateroom is and where the satellite tech is, people on the ship could be north, south, or right on the equator.

So about midnight I retired.

Tomorrow’s another day.

Till then, R