VOR: DELTA LLOYD LEG TWO DAY 15 QFB: received 29.11.08 0421 GMT

by Matt Gregory (navigator)

We’ve crossed the equator. Since I was asleep, hunched over the keyboard of my nav station, during my first crossing, it was gratifying to be conscious for my second crossing to see the ‘S’ change to an ‘N’. It’s a cool thing to watch if you are a ‘navigator type’. For some reason it may only be sailors that make such a big deal about crossing the equator. On airplane flights, they make hardly a mention about it at all. Out here, the equator crossing ritual is taken very seriously.

As our offering to King Neptune, we donated tomorrow’s ration of beef jerky.
Unfortunately, those of us that were punished by King Neptune on our first crossing during leg one didn’t have the opportunity to pass along the ‘spirit’ of the punishment tradition onto a new comer on this leg. This would have been a brutal passing for a first time crosser. As Stu Wilson, who’s been over the equator an uncountable number of times, commented, “Neptune seems to be angrier the slower the boat speed and the calmer the wind”.

Considering we were blast reaching along at 15 knots of boat speed during the leg one crossing, it was all Neptune could do to organise a slurry of food to dump on our heads. I got off easy. In becalmed conditions and where the first time crossers are outnumbered by 10 to 1, Stu has instigated ‘ceremonies’ that have lasted the entire day – his favourite: Duct taping first timers hands to the grinding pedestal handles.

The Green Dragon is still along side of us, just 200 metres away. The ‘drag race’ continues.

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