crossing the equator

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Wednesday and Thursday, March 12/13, 2008
On these two days we were at sea travelling to Yap Island in the Federated States of Micronesia. On Wednesday night at about 11:00pm we passed over the equator and if you haven’t had the opportunity to do that on a ship it is quite the ceremony. Of course the joke on the ship was to go out at night and watch for the bouys that designate where the equator is - I doubt anyone would fess up to going out on deck to look, but I bet a few folks did it. Both days were pretty uneventful - went to the normal things like going to the lecture, losing at Bingo, going to the Sit and Be Fit Class, going to Mass - I have had a lot of fun going to Mass this Lent as we build up to Easter - and winning a couple dollars in the Casino. Fr. Paul is so funny he told a joke today as part of the Homily about the couple that die at the same time and meet St. Peter at the Pearly Gates and the man says, “before I get locked into coming in there (meaning Heaven) I need to have a question answered - do you have golf in there.” St Peter says, “do we have golf in here? We have about a billion golf courses, you can play in any weather you like, we have golf everywhere in here.” The man looks at his wife and says, “You witch, if you hadn’t made me eat all those bran muffins I could have been up here 20 years ago.” Fr. Paul says he doesn’t know if the story is true (he has a very dry sense of humor and I have really enjoyed getting to know him). The lecture on Wednesday was very good on Douglas MacArthur’s South West Pacific Campaigns. We had the comedian Lee Bayless on Wed night and he was very funny - good clean fun. At the end he did a part of the program along with audience members and all the time he was being a pickpocket from them and they did not have any idea what was happening.
Thursday, after crossing the equator the night before, they had the King Neptune Ceremony where members of the crew that had never before crossed the equator (pollywogs) are taken before the King and are subjected to initiation rituals with the help of crew members that had previously crossed the equator. It was quite the ceremony with the “pollywogs” being held in a netted off area so they cannot escape and they are then brought out two-by-two in front of the king who determines they must kiss the fish (a real, but frozen (until the sun started melting it) fish), climb on the tables where they are slimed with spaghetti, some flour, whipped green goop and some yellow goop, and then the King asks the ship’s Captain and his officers whether the pollywogs should sit in the sun and have the goop baked on them or go in the pool. It was a mixture - some baked and some went in the water. All in all some good (almost clean) fun.

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