Underway to New Zealand
Underway to New Zealand
After leaving Panama, we headed south to New Zealand. It was a trip that was to last thirty days and yet the time was never boring for me. I often sat on the fantail and just looked at our wake. Sometimes dolphins would play around the bow as they were much speedier than we were. Once some flying fish landed on our welldeck.We crossed the equator and were greeted by King Neptune (Chief Abate, I think) and his court including the Royal Baby. Sailors who have not crossed the equator are known as "pollywogs" and those who have crossed are known as "shellbacks." The ordeal was not pleasant.
Part of the ordeal was being forced to crawl through a canvas chute loaded with garbage that had been thoughtfully saved by the Shellbacks for just this privilege.
We also had to "kiss the baby"--the baby can be seen seated at the top left hand corner of this picture. His belly was coated with grease and it was not pleasant to kiss it.
Later on as we were further south, we had "flight quarters" because some of the aviators complained that they were losing flight pay while we were at sea. There time in the air was, as you can see, very brief.
