Tuesday 14th Feb:  The Inter Tropical Convergence Zone 00 12.6S 88 50.3W – Five days out from Panama.  

Update blog by David

There is a tradition among mariners that the first time that a sailor crosses the equator he or she needs to pay homage to King Neptune.  There are pictures in books of  salty sea dogs establishing the Court of Neptune on deck requiring  some fiendish forfeit for first timers. Quite how this was to be accomplished depended upon the master and crew but you can imagine a ship’s company of men slatting around in the Doldrums for days and having plenty of time upon their hands  to dream up for all sorts of nasty surprises for the hapless first timers.

On Serendipity, the only one of our crew who had not previously sailed across the Equator was me, David. (Although both Peter and Linda each claimed a spurious bye on their assertion that they had crossed the equator in steam ships. Standards, I ask you!) Our ship’s company had had several days to devise all manner of unfortunate consequences for their skipper some involving having to swim across the line and others less easy to describe on a blog.  Among the WorldARC  fleet, we have heard VHF conversations about various other crews’ plans; for example in which the girls were to dress as mermaids etc. the men to cavort in various states of deshabilles…. (This did not seem to be a tenable option on Serendipity!) However, the crew showing its customary interest in things happening  around them, when the time came the entire ship’s company was  off watch, asleep! Only David was on watch to witness the event.

As a matter of courtesy, much as required by the ” Advisers” who piloted us through the Panama Canal, it is customary to give King Neptune a hot meal on board!.   However, as it happened, King Neptune was rather busy last night – there being several yachts crossing the line around the same time.  With his resources  widely stretched, he had to send his Emissary to Serendipity in his stead -  complete with his four pronged Trident!  

Here are the celebrations before and after we crossed the Equator:

00 00.002N                                                                              0 00.003S

At the time, we were dodging around the rain squalls in an attempt to avoid any lightning which might otherwise have trashed all of the boat’s electronics. That would not have been a happy circumstance.

The purple stuff is the radar reflection from a rain squall  as we were approaching the equator – it is 11 miles across!  You can see that we had turned right a little to avoid it.

59 miles to Wreck Bay, San Cristobal, Islas Las Galapagos!