We Cross the Equator Tonight

11:30 Hawaii/Bora Bora time is the projection - 2:30 a.m. Denver time.

As I write this on Wednesday afternoon, we’re still 1.99 degrees north of the equator, cruising east-southeast at about 20 mph. In case you’re wondering about the international date line, French Polynesia is east of it, so we don’t cross it until we are cruising toward New Zealand. Then we’ll go from being 3 hours earlier to 20 hours later than Denver time. Fortunately, my laptop remains on Denver time, which will assist me in meeting my weekly newspaper deadlines and knowing what time it is at home when I want to call someone. Our iPhones are switched to manual time setting, since we’re not connected to cell towers at sea. They’re on airplane mode with WiFi calling turned on, which has been a blessing, making is so easy to make and receive calls with family, friends, clients and colleagues! Today, for example, I was able to help broker associate Kathy Jonke work through an issue regarding a closing tomorrow. You’re welcome to call Rita or me. First ask Siri or Alexa “what time is it in Sydney” (or where you know us to be) before making the call!

Although we haven’t actually crossed the equator yet, the ship conducted a traditional ceremony at 10 a.m. around the Deck 7 swimming pool, which is open to the sky in good weather like today. (It’s 75 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny, with calm seas.) Below is a thumbnail to a 14-minute YouTube video of the whole event. You may want to fast forward here and there, since I found it too cumbersome to remove some of the more tedious segments from my video clips.

Here’s a link to Wikipedia’s description of the ceremony. The history of this traditional ceremony is interesting and included hazing on military and merchant marine ships, which has since been outlawed. Read all about it on that link. BTW, it is an initiation ceremony just for those who have never crossed the equator before. That applies to me, but not to Rita.

How it worked on the Viking Sky today was that the hot tub adjacent to the swimming pool was drained of hot water, filled with cold water to which many bags of ice were added to make it extra cold. Then crew members from different departments (wait staff, cabin stewards, entertainers, etc.) were paraded out as “pollywogs” to pay for their “sins” by being immersed in the ice water. In the video, you hear the cruise director recounting each crew member’s misdeeds for which he or she was being punished. For example, the singers from the entertainment staff were punished for having the shortest work hours. Listen for other humor from the cruise director over the general noise of the event.

After the pollywogs got their due, it was time for any passenger who wanted to have that experience to line up for their turn, and you’ll be impressed as how long that line was! Rita and I were not in it… Here’s the YouTube thumbnail:

Prior to the ceremony, at 9 a.m., resident historian William Simpson, a retired Wing Commander, presented a fascinating history of the War in the Pacific called “War Birds of World War II — The Carrier War in the Pacific.” I learned a lot about how we won that part of the war, thanks in large part to luck and misjudgments by the Japanese commander. It was fortunate that our aircraft carriers were out to sea when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

The most interesting part of the presentation was the description of a “war game” conducted in 1932 by Rear Admiral Harry Yarnell, which was eerily similar to the Japanese attack nine years later — airplanes from carriers that sailed in dark and radio silence to the north of Hawaii, conducted on a Sunday morning. Although it was a war game, it totally surprised the ships in Pearl Harbor and the air fields around the island. It’s said that the Japanese learned from that war game, but we didn’t. Read about it on this link.

This afternoon, the Captain, Staff Captain, Chief Engineer and Hotel General Manager sat for an hour-long Q&A in the theater. It was as well-attended as any other event, and lots of good questions were answered. Several of them had to do with whether we’ll detour around Africa instead of going through the Red Sea. That decision will be made at Viking’s home office in L.A. and not until late February or early March. No details were provided as to possible port calls if we’re diverted around Africa. Another question was where we might expect rough seas that are typical to the area. The answer was the Tasman Sea south of Australia. We’ll visit Tasmania.

We missed a 4:30 lecture on “Gauguin’s Depictions of Polynesia,” but lectures are recorded and can be viewed later on our stateroom TV. We’ve also watched a few that were recorded on other cruises! At 6:30 there’s another lecture about “Captain Bligh, Navigator Extraordinaire,” who survived with his crew navigating a lifeboat 3,500 miles across the Pacific.

Tonight we’ll eat again at the Chef’s Table, and the fixed menu is Japanese/Sushi. We’re looking forward to that! The visiting chef, Pepi Anevski, is Danish, not Japanese, but he’s famous for his work with sushi. He won the Sushi World Cup in Tokyo is 2013, followed by the Most Creative Sushi Master Award in 2014. He joined our cruise just for this week as a guest chef.

Bye for today!