When Mark and I first started planning this adventure, we discussed many things: weather, routes, specific places we wanted to go, others we wished to avoid, seasons, boat projects, boat projects, boat projects, provisioning, travel logistics, work, etc. etc. One thing I told Mark was that, when we crossed the equator, I thought we should pierce one ear each. I never pierced my ears when I was young (my mother told me it was barbaric and forbade me to do so until I was 15, at which point I had sort of lost interest), and as I grew older, my virgin lobes became sort of a distinctive feature. But, crossing the equator seemed like a big deal—an event that merited some special treatment.
As our departure date approached, I thought about going to Walmart and getting an ear piercing gun and a couple of studs, but I couldn’t bring myself to do so. I stopped by a Claire’s, and asked the girl there about how to pierce one’s own ear. She sighed, glanced up from her iphone, and looked at me uncomprehendingly. I dropped it. The project fell through the cracks. We left Seward.
A couple of months later in Lahaina, Maui, Mark had run off on his bike to chase down a package that had arrived for us at the post office containing a check he wanted to cash. We had been trying to leave Maui for the past few days and were really hoping to leave the following morning. While Mark was off chasing his package, I was wandering around downtown Lahaina and noticed “The Goldfinch,” an outfit that offered “tattoo, scarification, and piercing.” It was open – so I went in. The guy working there, Jason, was busy tattooing one of his coworkers, but welcomed me in and asked what I was looking for. I explained that my husband and I were sailing to New Zealand and that we wanted to pierce our ears when we crossed the equator, and that I was looking for the equipment to do that with—basically needles and earrings. He was intrigued. He asked which part of our ears we would be piercing. I told him we would pierce our lobes. He said that if I came back in a couple of hours—once he was done tattooing his friend—he would set us up. He specified that he wouldn’t normally give out piercing needles, but earlobes were easy, and he was “into rituals.” He was personally interested in our plans. I thanked him and went on my way.
I caught up with Mark, who had successfully retrieved our mail (but not cashed the check), and we paid one last visit to our hosts in Lahaina, Christine and Dan. We returned the bikes they had lent us (including one fabulous rickety sea-foam-green beach-cruiser), enjoyed a drink on their amazing deck over the water, watched the sun set and discussed our sailing plans. They filled our bags with avocados, limes, and oranges from their garden, and we walked off toward the boat. The Goldfinch was on the way back, so I told Mark about it and we stopped in. Jason was there and ready for us. Jason had quite a few piercings—including a bar through the top of his nose—and his right ear seemed to have little pieces cut out of it. He was very nice and clearly serious about his work. He went over the procedure with us, and gave us a sheet on how to care for your piercing while it heals. I looked at it. It addressed things like urination, intercourse, and mouthwash—hm. We apparently weren’t typical customers. Still, some of the information was valid. We would not clean our earlobes with mouthwash and we would use only tampons, not sanitary napkins. We picked out some simple titanium body piercing studs – mine was tiny and had a small blue gemstone in it, and Mark’s was plain titanium – and Jason scoped out our earlobes and went in back to sterilize our needles and studs. While the sterilizing took place, we looked around the shop at different tattoo, piercing, and scarring (??) paraphernalia, and I decided my mother was probably right. Still, this felt right for our journey into the South Pacific—not like Walmart or Claire’s. (Incidentally, there was kind of a cool bikini there that had the Hawaiian Islands cut out of the top of the bottom so the wearer would have a Hawaiian Islands tan-line on her butt—temporary tattoo? Sun scarification? Interesting.)

Several weeks later, we crossed the equator. It was rough, wet, and squally, and projected to be so for the rest of our passage to Manihiki. It was also 2am. We were having enough trouble staying fed and the thought of piercing and aftercare made me feel sort of seasick, so we decided to wait for our first landfall after the crossing. So, yesterday evening, after a truly wonderful day onshore, we were back onboard having a ricard and enjoying the sunset, and we decided the moment had arrived. We had spent some time that day looking at pearls onshore, and had seen some lovely earrings, so there was some added incentive. I think Mark would look nice with a small dark pearl in his earlobe! Okay. We dug out our sterilized packets, washed our hands, cleaned our earlobes with alcohol, Mark donned his gloves, and he pierced my ear, just like that! Okay. Mark’s turn. Okay. I washed my hands again, and looked closely at the needle I’d be sticking through my beloved’s ear. Mark’s needle was a little bigger because his stud is bigger than mine. It was hollow, looked very sharp (good) and quite scary (bad). The boat was rolling softly at anchor. I gripped Mark’s earlobe, shot for the middle, and pushed the needle through. “Ow! Ah okay yeah well that does hurt a bit I’d say. Ow ow ow.” I stayed on task despite Mark’s vocalizations, pushed the needle all the way through, and attached the stud to its backing. I’d say getting pierced is easier than piercing! I’m also glad I picked out a very small stud! Both of our holes are a little off center towards the left, (we had to push the needle from the back of the earlobe through the front, making it difficult to line it up, and I guess we were both scared of piercing our faces!) but they are straight, and I think we did well. Mark definitely looks more salty—I don’t know about me though. Now we need to make sure they stay healthy (there is a hospital here just in case). I’m going to heat up some of our distilled water for our salt-water earlobe bath now.
(written September 10)