Navigation Errors, Trivia, Adult Beverages, and A Giant Jenga Contest

My apologies.

                   In yesterday’s post I told you that our crossing of the Equator was going to be “In 31.20 hours from now, around noontime, the day after tomorrow.” I must have consumed to much grog at the watch change before I wrote that because 31 hours brings us to today, not tomorrow.

                   The error was discovered when I did todays calculations. Presently we are at 3 degrees above the Equator. (This is the furthest south that I have ever been. Paula has already been to Tahiti, so this is old hat to her.) Which means that we only have about 210 miles to go until we get to the Equator! Knowing what the “number” was yesterday, I said to myself, “Yikes the Captain must have put the “pedal to the metal” last night to cover that distance!”

Then I realized that the more likely explanation was that I had “Miscalculated”

                   The Captain has relieved me from navigation duty.

 I am now polishing those evil mirrors in the elevators.

So that means that at six bells (3:00 pm) this afternoon there will be the King Neptune Polliwog to Shellback Ceremony. Presently there are over 400 polliwogs aboard, not including the crew. It may take until tomorrow to finish this thing!

“Hey Don, what do you mean by ‘six bells’ anyway?”

Well, I’m glad you asked that question! That means that you would like another mini-lesson on things nautical. I’m proud of you guys! It’s not everyone that wants to sit through one of these boring, useless learning experiences!

I’m fairly sure that you’ve heard the expression,

 “Eight Bells and All’s Well!”

                   Bells were used to indicate time aboard ships. The watches that the men would stand were four hours long.

                   So, an hourglass was used to indicate when 30 minutes had expired. (I guess this was a half-hourglass!) When the first half-hour was over, the mate would strike the bell once…. One bell.

                   At the end of the next half-hour the bell would be struck twice…. Two bells. I’m sure you get that concept now, so I won’t go through all of the four hours and their bells. Let’s ‘cut to the chase’ and get to the end. When four hours had finished the bell was rung eight times, two rings for every hour of the four-hour watch.

                             Ring-Ring

                             Ring-Ring

                             Ring-Ring

                             Ring-Ring

                   Eight bells signified the end of that particular watch period.

                   So, “Eight bells and all’s well” could hopefully be announced.

          The day was divided into six four-hour watches (6 x 4 = 24) with the last watch of the day divided into two two-hour mini watches. This was so that there was an odd number of watches which meant that the watches would rotate oddly, assuring that no one would get stuck with the same pattern of watches.

          First Watch started at 8 pm and went to midnight.

          Second or Middle Watch was midnight to 4 am.

          Third or Morning Watch was 4am to 8am.

          Fourth Watch or Forenoon was 8 am to noon.

          Fifth Watch or Afternoon was from noon to 4 pm.

          And the Sixth Watch, the Dog Watch was divided into two parts, 4 pm to 6pm and 6pm to 8 pm. The cycle would then repeat itself ad infinitum.

          So you can see how the number of bell rings had nothing to do with the actual time, or hour, of the day itself.

                   Lesson over.

                   Now you can impress your friends and relations with randomly looking at the clock and saying, “Oh my, it’s five bells already, where does the time go!” and just get up and leave.

          They won’t have a clue.

                   At seven bells into the Dog Watch last night went into the theater to see an Elton John Tribute Show. This guy was good! Now, it’s really hard to sound just like Sir Elton, but it is possible to play the piano like him. It’s just hard to do! This guy didn’t miss a note! It was quite impressive!

                   When it was over we all staggered into the passageway in order to get to the other parts of the ship. I say staggered because the seas have been moderate, which means that you can feel the movement. The stabilizers can do just so much. We kind of laughed at the situation and wondered… Is it better to have the passageway full so that we could all lean and bump into each other or would we be better staggering about all by ourselves?

                   Back to the afternoon….

                   We had some time before dinner to kill because we were shut out of the afternoon Trivia Contest.

                   No room at the Inn.

                   Or in this case, The Wheelhouse Lounge.

                   This is getting too crazy. It seems that we need to get anywhere an hour early just to get seats! That’s what we get for traveling with a bunch of Senior Citizens who have nothing better to do than show up early! (just like on land) They come in and save their favorite chairs for their teams. The rules (loosely) indicate that a team should have no more than six members. But no one checks and I know that it’s for fun and the prize is a priceless Princess Drink Coaster, but still, how can you jump in jubilation when you “win” with a team of thousands? Your chance of getting the correct answer goes up exponentially with every additional member. We’ve been to many, many, Trivia Contests over the years and these on board here, are fairly difficult. I’m pretty good at these things and Paula always contributes with a random fact that I didn’t know, and we barely get to 50% correct! So having folks scream YAY!!! when their team of a million gets them all correct is just a bit much.

          Can you tell that this vexes us?

          We’re never gonna get a Coaster!

          So, in order to feel better we went to the Good Spirits Bar and Lounge and sat at the Bar to drown our sorrows. We had an hour before dinner so there was some time to kill.

                   “What do you want to drink?”

                    “I dunno, what do you want?”

          We had met a lady last week that was going through the entire cocktail list on board and trying one of each, so….. that sounded like a good place to start.  Paula had a “Hawaiian Tropics”, and I had a “Captain’s Bounty”. Suffice it to say that the ingredients were everything that you would expect at a bar on a cruise in the South Pacific. Paula had two and I had just one as I was driving. When we were ready to go to dinner, we realized that we needed to extricate ourselves off of the barstool and stand upright. This became a source of amusement as the ship was still a rockin’ and a rollin’ through the waves.

 Which made standing and walking a chore.

Throw into the mix a few Alcoholic Beverages and we get a recipe for inclusion in the ‘Lesson’s to be Learned’ Book of Nautical No-No’s.  But we just needed to get down the passageway to the Dining Room, so away we ambled, deftly trying to place one foot in front of the other and still counter the movement of the ship.

          This is when we discovered the way to tell if one of our fellow passengers had indeed imbibed too much…. They would be walking upright and going straight as an arrow because the ship would counter their inebriated walk with precision!

                   Well, we’re now just over two degrees north of the Equator, so we’d better start preparations for the Crossing Ceremony. We’re not sure what to do, so we guess that we’ll go practice our best Polliwog to Shellback imitations.