Sunday, February 4, 2018- Cruise Day 12; Crossing the Equator at Sea

Sunday, February 4, 2018- Cruise Day 12; Crossing the Equator at Sea

We had a leisurely breakfast in the dining room and did the morning trivia.  We ended up with several people whom we have played with before, but who really haven’t contributed much to answers, but who were eager to have us on their team, and we didn’t want to appear rude.  We ended up with 15/20, while the winning team had 18/20.  One of the questions had a clearly wrong or arguable answer that we should have gotten credit for, but we didn’t make a fuss.  The question was What is bathophobia the fear of?  According to wikepedia one definition is fear of depth or descending, but the trivia answer was fear of stairs or slopes.  That wouldn’t have gotten us a win though.  

We attended an Effy birthstone seminar and then had pizza, knockwurst and hamburgers for lunch.  We walked the hallways of the ship for a bit of exercise, covering a mile by circling from deck 7 up to our cabin on deck 10.

The ship’s crew put on a ceremony to ask King Neptune and his Queen permission to cross the equator, even though we had crossed the equator at 12:38AM.  The whole proceeding was a bit hokey, but they did subject 4 volunteer passengers and several non-volunteer cruise director’s staff “Pollywogs” to various abuses including having raw eggs broken over their heads, getting slathered with food, and having juices poured over their heads before Neptune and his Queen were satisfied and granted permission to cross the equator.  The last insult was the Captain and his first officers all had to “walk the plank” into the pool  In marine lore, when a Pollywog crosses the equator, they become a Shellback, so we are all Shellbacks now.  

We did the afternoon trivia with the same group and tied for second while two teams tied for first.  The tie breaker was How many entries were there in London’s first phone book.  The guesses were 40 and 4000, while the answer was 255.  

We made reservations for dinner at 5:15PM by phoning the dining room after lunch, and when the time came, we were seated promptly and had a nice dinner, but skipped dessert to catch the early Showtime show, which was a Variety showtime by musician Salvatore Hasard.  He played a mean electric guitar, sang very much like a Robby Williams, and also played the piano, sax, and drums.  He was backed by the Princess band and put on a great show.  

We then returned to the Horizon court for desserts before heading to music trivia.  We had only one person join us, and there were several songs we had no clue on, but we put in a decent score of 22/40 while the winners had 33.  

The Superbowl was supposed to be showing on the Movies Under the Stars, but it began raining pretty hard, so they put it on the screens in the Explorer lounge and on Channel 41 in the staterooms.  We watched the movie “3 Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” in the Princess theatre, which ended with a cliff hanger.  When we returned to our room, we watched the exciting last quarter of the Superbowl.  We’re sure John Enderle was super thrilled to see his Philadelphia Eagles win a Superbowl.  

Tomorrow is an early start as we arrive in Fortaleza, Brazil early.  We have a tour booked, which departs at 7:25AM.