Loco

It’s official, last night at around 4 am we crossed the equator, finally entering the Southern Hemisphere and signaling the final leg of our Pacific crossing. With a plastic cup of cheap champagne and a piece of cake we toasted our success and watched as the GPS counted down to 0.00.000.

Despite the inevitable anti-climax of crossing an invisible line (comparable to new years eve in many ways, I almost felt like linking arms and singing Old Lang Syne), I am delighted to report that yes the water now drains down the sink in the opposite direction and everything is upside down and dolphins wearing top hats ride unicycles on the waves.

To mark the occasion of our crossing, Lena, my female companion on Esprit who will be sorely missed when she alights in Tahiti, donned some rope for hair and grasped a trident cleverly made from duct tape. And in the full maritime glory of Neptune, whose whim has determined our trip, she baptised us one by one, so I can now proudly add a Maritime Doctorate to my list of lifetime achievements.

The Duldrums have performed exactly as advertised and we have been doing rather a lot of floating these last few days. This morning though it seems that Neptune was smiling upon us from his crustacean kingdom, his seaweed semi detatched, whatever you want to call it, and we were graced with 12 knots of wind from the south east, just enough to put up the spinnacker (another failed spelling attempt). This is a large and very colourful sail made from what looks like parachute silk, designed to catch the light winds as they idle past us, pulling us towards our destination. A realistic estimate puts us at anchor in around 5 days.

It will be great to put my feet back on dry land although now, with my sea legs firmly in place I’ve been warned to be wary of land sickness, what a cruel twist of fate, you get used to one thing and then the rules of play are changed. Oh well, with the end in sight I can start to think about what awaits me on the islands. My trusty lonely planet doesn’t rave about Nuka Hiva but it sounds as good a place as ever to restock and relax for a few days before we start our island hopping towards Oz. The longest leg after this shouldn’t last more than a week, so with this under my belt I have a feeling that the time will fly. Before I know it I’ll be job hunting in Australia.

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