[Directly transcribed from my logbook – introduction to the trip here]
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2014.
Today we should pass the equator. For this purpose there will be a small party tonight, and I guess the cook has in mind for dinner a few “specials”…
I get up at 5 am. Not much sleep in total given that yesterday I fell asleep only at 1 am, after watching a few episodes of an American series a friend gave me. I get up early this morning because I had decided to make bread! Ciabatta bread with olive oil and salt crystals, normal bread, plus small croissants, served for breakfast: it’s not my first time as kitchen hand onboard but doing some baking at an early hour is new 😉
When I am done with breakfast, I go for a little stroll outside and put my face towards the rising sun for a little while, and then I head back to the kitchen in order to prepare lunch: vegetables (peppers, onions, tomatoes), arancini, gnocchi. Yeepee! Now I know how to get the shape of gnocchis 😉 I also bake a sweet dough for a dessert whose name I forgot but which is very good, a roll of cooked dough stuffed with ricotta and candied fruits. All of these takes up to 11 am. Quite tired, I go and take a short nap before lunch, as well as a long one after! No reading or knitting today…
In the afternoon, after resting, I am about to take my clothes from the laundry room when I come across Lou in the corridor. Lou is another passenger, embarked in Dakar together with her daughter Paola. We agree to chat around a drink, and so a few minutes later we head to the kitchen to ask for mint syrup. The cook immediately disappears in a cubbyhole and comes back a few seconds later with… rum and coke! There is usually no alcohol on board (except wine table wine for passengers at meal times), but today it’s different. We call Laurent, the other passenger, to join us and we end up having a drink as well with Vincenzo, the Chief Officer. It is only 5 pm! The party is already starting 😉
[…]
The evening turned out to be a beautiful evening, quite unexpected on this kind of ship: Barbecue outside, all navigation officers in T-shirts, shorts and flip-fops! Pre-dinner drink with alcohol, with almost all the crew members, including those I hadn’t seen before. We danced a little before dinner, driven by Vincenzo (cadet) and Michele (second officer), and much after. Good atmosphere and good laugh, I would not have imagined such a party on board, given the seriousness and formal side of normal days. For example we made “the caterpillar”in the passageways and went into the captain’s room, singing “Braziiiil! Lala lala lala lalaaaaaa, lala lala lala lalaaaaaa…” !!!). Totally crazy.
We had dinner outside, we ate a lot, as usual (the food is always so good!). I would have loved to sit at a new table next to persons I didn’t know but Joseph, the steward, gestured to invite me to the captain’s table once again. For this special evening, I wore nice high heel shoes I had bought a few months before in Manila (very useless on a container ship otherwise!).
A little ceremony took place that night: Vincenzo, the Chief Officer, appeared dressed with a King Neptune’s costume, with a white beard and a trident, and delivered a little speech. Small gifts are traditionally prepared for people who cross the equator at sea for the first time: passengers get a diploma with a marine name – mine was starfish! – and cadets get an haircut and receive a bucket of water mixed with flour and eggs on their heads… In our case, there was only water, it remained friendly, and funny. It was the only meal of the crossing where none of the officers, nor even the captain, had a shirt with epaulettes.
In fact we passed the equator at 23.15 local time (22.15 Rio de Janeiro time). I went to the bridge to be able to see with my own eyes the 0’00’ of latitude directly on the GPS. In practice, it does not change much to pass this line, but it has a symbolic value.
I went to bed then, at around midnight, with the head full of dreams about what was awaiting me in this new part of the world.
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