Location: Atlantic Ocean
The excitement in the air this morning was palpable; classes were canceled, and we were set to pass the equator today. For lunch, our head chef, Benno, made delicious grilled cheese with tomato soup. To be able to pass the equator safely, we had to come up with performances, sacrifices, and costumes to show the court of Neptune. After lunch all the students scrambled to finalize their skits make costumes, many put on togas from bed sheets, other dressed like they where in the 60’s and others creative costumes. The first show was presented by watch team 1 and was a recreation of the birth of the Schaner twins, the parts of Kip and Kaden where played wonderfully by Kip and Jake. The play ended with some milk spilling onto Freddie’s bed. Following that wonderful performance was Charlton, Arielle, and Sophia’s dance routine to free falling and Mads, Christina, and Will’s dance routine to Rasputin. Alva and Maddy rapped the SNL skit done by Pete Davidson and Timothee Chalamet. Emma and Frida gave a presentation on perusing early motherhood. Watch team 3 sang a rendition of the 12 days of Christmas that went:
On the first day of passage, Seamester gave me a type 5 PFD
2 callused feet
3 sign out nights
4 foul heads
5 broken fans
6 sexy staff (sorry, Jake)
7 ER visits
8 ish hours off
On the 9th day of passage, poop bandit gave me 9 mysteryyy poopssss
10 fish IDs
11 expert divers
12 kilos of macadamia nuts
13 unrelated students
14 grand on cheese
15 new best friends (awe)
The last presentation was done by Tom, Kaden, Benno, Connor, and Nate, where they did a ritual for Neptune, shaved Kaden’s armpits, then shaved Connors, Toms, Benno’s, and Nate’s heads; Benno and Tom went full dome. So inspired by this display, Laszlo and Jake joined in and also shaved their heads. After that, people gave the court the rest of their sacrifices; some gave candy, the girls trimmed their hair, and Emma cried as she threw two of her bracelets into the ocean. After all the presentations, the court of Neptune decided on punishments. The worst was bobbing for tangerines in the used dishy pit, followed by having to go through the sham-gina (a car wash-style line of chamois to crawl through), and the easiest was getting sprayed by the fire hose in mist mode. Jake, Kip, Emma, and Frida had to bob in the dishy pit while Benno volunteered to do it as well. The rest of the of the group went through the sham-gina and fire hose no matter what punishment they actually got because it looked fun. After this, we all washed off by swimming across the equator in the ocean, and Nate was finally allowed to swim as his foot had healed! Emma also joined in on her first ocean swim, as her pinky toe is healing nicely as well. Once all of us were back on Vela, we motored past the equator line, blasting the horn in celebration. All in all, it was an excellent day filled with laughter, weirdness, baldness, and tears all the same.