Crossing the line
14 April 2019 | North Pacific Ocean
stephen foot
It has been a busy 24 hours on Water Music. Starting last night Gabrielle's watch was interrupted by a series of ships and yachts that compromised the solitude of what had become our own private ocean. The ship was going to China and the yachts seem to be going to the Galapagos with us.
Once we had got over the shock of this level of overcrowding, we were joined by the nightly congregation of Boobies. Last night we numbered 7 Boobies on the pullpit and another one on the upper spreaders. We were hugely excited about all this wildlife until we saw this morning the consequences of having so many deeply free range birds overnight. It was then that we realised that Boobies do an awful lot of poohs. Today, Mark has improvised with a mop as a figure head - it doesnt do much for the Water Music's lines (& is probably not included in any flag etiquette manual), but does seem to keep Bobby & his friends away.
With a deck clean and the boat thundering along at 7.5 knots, Mark reminded us of his brother's view of fishing on Water Music. "Stephen hasnt got a clue and thinks that you can just put a line out and catch fish - ridiculous..." Well, Alistair we ignored your negativity and have just had a double Tuna strike and landed the twin yellow fin tuna. As both were small, we have kept both and had the beginnings of one for lunch as a Sashimi, accompanied by lime, ginger, chile, and horse radish (we couldnt find any Pisco). Clearly for a lunch as good as this,we hove to. Dropping the sails, we wallowed at 3 knots for luncheon.
After our coffee we put sail back up and are now speeding towards "The Line" and wondering what Neptune will exact as his payment from the three virgins who are preparing to cross for the first time. The skipper took particular precautions to ensure that all of the tuna innards, heads and tails went straight over the side to avoid any risk of them being recycled as any form of gunk that Neptune might want to use in an initiation ceremony. What would happen?
Neptune came aboard as is the custom as we crossed from N Hemisphere to the South at 1730 local time. The crew pleaded with him for safe passage for the ship, the three virgins and the one experienced member of the crew and asked what penalty would be extracted. Apart from the mandatory libation to the god, Neptune proceeded to shave the left eyebrow of the skipper as the price of allowing the yacht safe passage. This seemed a small price to pay - albeit it means that the skipper is now moving around in a somewhat lopsided way - with all the weight on the starboard leg.
After 6000 nautical miles, Water Music is in the South Pacific and all are in good health. We expect to arrive in San Cristobal, Galapagos at 0700 Monday morning. Not a bad way to start a week...