Neptune's Court

October 12, 2024

So, I just completed my first equator crossing aboard the ship, and it was wildly fun! It all started with a group of us “pollywogs” (those who haven’t crossed the equator yet) waiting on our knees in front of Neptune and his court, ready to judge us. A lot of things happened, most of which I will not include here—you just have to experience it yourself ;-). We first underwent some powerful “cleaning” by insanely strong seawater hydrants. Then came the infamous smearing of a mysterious blue paste all over our faces and hair. It smelled like a mix of aged cheese and some other sticky, unidentifiable ingredients. Gross. If I think about it, I can still smell it now…ewww. We drank some unclassified mystery concoction through a syringe and turned into human cakes with eggs and flour over our heads. And then came the grand finale—some sort of liquid with lots of tomatoes in it. I hate tomatoes. Hate them. After enduring everything, we (smelly, soaked, tomato-cake-flavored pollywogs) earned the title of shellbacks! You wouldn’t believe it, but it was so much fun!! What can I say… I’d do it all over again!

We also crossed the International Date Line… a few times! If that sounds confusing, trust me, it was. I learned that the Date Line isn’t a straight shot—at these latitudes, it bends around Kiribati, veering east before looping back west toward Samoa. It’s an interesting choice, but it actually makes sense because it allows the people of Kiribati to all share the same date, instead of being split by the line. Trying to keep track of the time and day as we crossed it was really hard—one minute, it’s tomorrow, the next it’s yesterday. But fortunately, on the ship, we just repeated the same day twice.

And to conclude, we deployed our 4th float, the New Millennium Academy RHINO-float (RHINO for short) adopted by the New Millennium Academy from Brooklyn Center, MN. RHINO is the mascot of the school, which actually stands for Respect, Help, Inspire, Never Give Up, Overcome!  Super nice! The float was the first one on the voyage deployed in the Southern Hemisphere, at 04º 30.220’ S and 165º 45.595’ W, on October 9 at 07:53 PM. Follow its journey on the on the GO-BGC website. Use one of the interactive maps to look for RHINO—just search for the Float-ID 22972. You can also find information on key parameters measured by each adopted float on the AdoptAFloatViz page. and stay tuned for our next deployments and news from the National Geographic Resolution!