Location: 00,31.73 N; 039, 58. 36 W
Today was a holiday here on ARGO – it’s Equator Crossing Day!!! At 5:30 am, we were awoken to the sound of Smash and her watch team yelling “IT’S EQUATOR CROSSING TIME” while also blaring the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song throughout the cabins. After this, we all quickly mustered in the cockpit and began the countdown while continuously playing “Jump on the Line.” It was a pretty crazy moment for 5 am; everyone was cheering and screaming even though we all were half awake. Then the lucky watch teams were able to go back to bed for a few hours until either their next watch or lunch, while Watch Team 1 kept the party going during their watch. Lunch started the festivities with some amazing quesadillas and chips by Sierra and her sous chefs, Allie and Shane. Right after that, we had a quesadilla war with the remaining leftovers until they were all accidentally thrown overboard. Then we had a few special guests join us onboard-King Neptune, and his royal court of Shellbacks all paid us a visit to walk us through the tradition of becoming a Shellback ourselves. First, of course, we had to entertain the court; they are royalty (spork trident and all). This started the day’s constant laughter as everyone got very creative with their presentations.
Then we made our donations to the sea- yes to all you pollywogs reading this, this is the part where your child may or may not have shaved their head. A majority of us just chopped off a small chunk of hair or threw in special jewelry. But, for the brave souls of Carolyn, Smash, Jay, Kate, Calum, and James, they decided to donate most of their hair to the sea. After donations, we were to crawl around the chart-house then drink the drink of the seas (milk with a secret spice/spices?), and we were officially Shellbacks!! To celebrate, we stopped ARGO, and all jumped into the middle of the ocean, 250 miles from shore. Then we had a few hours of downtime then met up for chicken curry dinner, never thought I’d miss curry, but I was up to today. Overall, a pretty amazing day. To end this blog post, here’s a quote from Emma: “Back home they get school canceled from hurricanes or snowstorms, here we got school canceled because Tim dressed up with a mop on his face and a spork on a broom.” That’s it for today, folks, coming from everyone – Love You to all the families!! Special shoutout to my awesome family- Love you, mom and dad, and to my amazing brothers!! Also lots of love to my puppies- Chelsea and Montrose