Today's Highlight - Circling 'Null Island' (or so we hoped)

The captain told me at breakfast that we will be circling it "anti-clockwise," which means our veranda on the port side of the ship will be a fine viewing station. Too bad, it turned up missing!

Verity’s guest at “Coffee Chat” was Johannes Lecknar, the Associate General Manager of the ship. He described his responsibilities and answered questions. I learned that we will only be taking on fresh foods in Dakar. The next general provisioning will be in Lisbon.

There are currently 343 subscribers of this travel-blog, most of whom are back in Colorado, so Rita and I thought we’d show you today’s Viking Daily video. The cruise director records this piece the evening prior, describing the activities available the day it is viewed on our stateroom TVs. Here’s today’s recording — it will give those who are not with us a glimpse into Verity’s personality and the many activities that are scheduled on this, a sea day. Unfortunately, she left out the highpoint of today, because it’s not listed on the daily schedule: our circumnavigating of Null Island about 5:30 p.m.! Enjoy this video — my on-board readers, of course, will skip it!

The first lecture of the day was Gavin W. Roser’s completion of his 2-part behind-the-scenes tour of the Viking Sky. I mentioned yesterday that Gavin was at the coffee chat with the Chief Engineer and arranged an immediate back-of-the-ship tour, and as many as half of Gavin’s slides in this morning’s lecture were photos and videos he shot yesterday morning. In this lecture we learned the many systems at work on the ship.

The second lecture today was Dr. Kathy Mansfield talking about the Anglo-Boer wars. Included were a couple video clips which explained a lot. They’re really worth watching.

I had heard of the Boer War in school but never studied it. I figured from the name that the Boers were some African tribe, but, as you probably know already, "Boer” is the Dutch word for farmer. The Boers were Dutch farmers. African natives were involved, fighting the farmers here and there for the land which the Boers seized as they trekked northeast away from British rule in the Cape Colony, but native Africans were also hired by both the Boers and the Brits to play a role in their fighting, such as by driving horse-drawn carriages/weapons. The war played out in two stages. In the first stage, the Boers won because they were great guerrilla fighters benefiting from the knowledge of the land, and they sorely beat the British soldiers. The second stage was more brutal, and the Brits, whose pride had been hurt by the defeat, waged a scorched earth strategy, burning to the ground all 30,000 Dutch farmhouses and incarcerating the women and children they didn’t kill in concentration camps where tens of thousands died from diseases like cholera and measles. The men were exiled to St. Helena, the same island off the coast of Africa where Napolean was exiled. It became an international scandal. Late in the war, the Boers defeated the Brits in a battle which led to a peace agreement. That agreement did not help the Blacks, however, and led directly to the apartheid era.

Very similar to the Viet Cong vs. the American military 70 years later.

Well, we crossed the zero meridian and equator at 5:45, and the buoy was missing. It’s a weather buoy (one of 17) and NOAA confirmed that they hadn’t heard from it in 45 days. It also disappered in 2017 right after it was installed, but was replaced in 2018. After looking for half an hour, the captain gave up and we’re now heading for Dakar.

Oh, well, off to dinner with Gary and Susan Miller to celebrate Susan’s birthday. I’ll stream the 6:30 lecture by George Sranko about “Fascinating Creatures of Our Travels” later tonight or tomorrow.

Bye for now.