Day 164, Year 3: Fireworks on the Equator
Date: Hari Senin (Monday), Bulan Oktober 20, Pada Tahan 2008
Weather: Overcast; No Wind; HOT
Latitude: 00 degrees 25.970 minutes N
Longitude: 104 degrees 31.415 minutes E
Location: Pulau Mesanak, Indonesia
It feels so strange to be back in northern latitudes after being “down south” for so long. This equator crossing ended up to be totally different from our first. The night got more and more overcast, so none of the moonlight could shine through. And then the light show started. At first we just had heat lightening, but as crossing time neared, the torrential rains came down and then we had lightening accompanied by thunder. It was 3:30 am and wet and miserable, so our only celebration was to
throw 105 pennies in the sea as an offering to Neptune and enjoying the “fireworks” in the sky.. I then went back to sleep as it was Mark’s watch. When I got up for my early morning watch, the rains had stopped, but it remained overcast throughout the day. Earlier in the evening, we had changed our destination. We were going to arrive at Pulau Kentar during the wee hours of the morning in the dark, so we went on about 35 miles to Pulau Mesanak. We arrived here mid-day and I actually slept most
the afternoon while Mark read.
Mark spent part of his afternoon fashioning a Singapore courtesy flag. We have one that we bought from Landfall Navigation, but it doesn’t appear to be the right flag. Marianne and Kaye on Nabob are not going into Singapore, so they gave us their Singapore flag that was not quite right either. But between all we had, Mark came up with what we think is the correct flag. We had sundowners on Shirena and discussed our various ways of getting from here to Singapore. We think we will spend tomorrow
here and then head north to another anchorage before our final assault on the Singapore harbor. But tomorrow is another day and who knows what decisions will be made. Bottom line is that we enter Singapore no later than Friday.
