Yesterday we celebrated Neptune day, though we crossed the equator before Brazil. The day started at about 7:30am when members of the crew came yelling and drumming through the halls waking everyone up. At 9:00, the student body made their way up to the 7th deck to pay our respects to King Neptune (Captain Jeremy). Here is the procedure for turning from a pollywog into shellback: 1. get fished guts dumped over your head. 2. jump into the pool, which is already filled with fish guts water. 3. get out of the pool and kiss two dead fish. 3. kiss king neptune’s ring. 4. be sworn a shellback.
From this point on a good percentage of the boat shaved their heads. Rumor was that we were closing in on the SAS record of 70 girls shaving their heads, im not sure if we broke it or not. Needless to say, the student body is now a bit different looking. For dinner, we got a feast of a barbeque for dinner. Man how I’ve missed me some ribs, burgers, dogs, corn on the cob and ice cream sundaes.
On Friday night, an open mike comedy night was held and Slava (my roommate) was one of the two performers. Everyone thought the night would be a disaster, but about 100 people showed up and found Slava hilarious. Both he and the other comic was great and the night was a surprising success.
On Thursday morning (I realize im going backwards in time now). I was lucky enough to get a tour of the bridge, these tours are a precious commodity here. We learned about the ships communication, navigation, and fire systems and got to take lots of pictures of the equipment and the view from the bridge. We also were able to take pictures sitting in the captains chair. Fun fact: when running full throttle on 2 engines, the MV Explorer burns $1000 of fuel an hour (this is when we are averaging 20 knots). When the ship is running on all four engines (30knots, the captain hasn’t done this yet) the engines burn $2000 of fuel each hour. And people wonder why this program is $20,000…..
We are about halfway to cape town as a write this and once there I will do my best to get pictures from both Brazil and the beginning of Africa up online.
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1 comment:
This is great info to know.
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