The Equator
A few days after passing through the inter-tropical convergence zone, we were off the coast of Equador, and would soon be across the equator. Again, something quite unexpected: who would have thought the equator would be cold? There is something called the Humboldt Current, which brings cold water up the coast of South America, and it shoots directly toward the Galapagos Islands (which explains the presence of penguins on one of the islands). It also cools down the air.
During July, an inversion layer is created: cool water creates a low cloud layer, which prevents the sun from getting through and keeps the cool air down. It was actually getting quite chilly. I had cold-weather clothing for the first week of the trip stored away and I had to break it out of the sealed Ziploc bags (to prevent it from molding). To get through night watch, I had to wear 4 layers of clothes, plus my rain gear just to keep the wind off (there is not really rain in this kind of weather, just fine mist). We don't wear shoes on board because of the constant water that sloshes across the deck, and whereas before it was always like bath water, now it was really cold. This was not what we expected the equator to be like!
Of course, with the crossing of the equator comes the "crossing the line" ceremony. This is a time-honoured tradition on ships that pass over latitude zero. King Neptune temporarily seizes control of the ship and calls for all "pollywogs". They go through an "initiation" and then become "shellbacks".
Some of these "ceremonies" have been quite violent in the past. In Eric Newby's book "The Last Grain Race", he describes being coverered in rotten food, tar, poisonous read lead paint, and then more or less being beaten up. Of course, our ceremony was comparably muted. On the other hand, the shellback crew tried to use as much psychological torture as possible in the days leading up. Mysterious notes appeared in the companionway where ship work schedules are posted--supposedly from King Neptune's spies--warning of what was to come. Diagrams showing methods of torture on the ship were "left out" to be discovered. And to add to the tension, we didn't know when we were actually going to cross the line, as we were steering almost parallel to it and the GPS was covered up so we couldn't peek into the charthouse to see our position.
Finally, one afternoon we were sitting around doing our normal stuff and there was a loud pop as someone fired a flare. Then the shellback crew appeared dressed in various costumes banging pots to heard us all into the main salon where we were locked in for about 20 minutes and left to stew. Then we were called out to greet the court of King Neptune.
The captain doesn't want us to describe the entire hazing ritual (and he specifically didn't like the word "hazing"), but it consists of the court calling out each person and reading their "crimes", for which various punishments are meted out. A lot of these have to do with being painted with tar, and everyone ended up being dunked into a foul bath of water sea water spiked with a vile combination of ingredients from the food section of the cargo hold. After it was all over, we cleaned up the deck and washed ourselves off, as much as we could. I didn't really feel cleaned up until 3 days later when we arrived in the Galapagos where I could have a hot shower and dump all of my clothes off at a laundromat.
7:13:53 PM 
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