Pacific Ocean 11 April 2010 00.000 127.2101W
In all my wildest imaginings of this moment, I never pictured a crossing on my dog watch howling along at 10 knots.
When I woke up late for my watch Frank had stepped on the gas (tightening the sails, probably thinking if they can sleep through it they’re comfortable), the GPS was showing our speed at a steady 10 knots, with spikes to 12 knots, nearly the 13 knot speed she’d attained at the famed Los Frailes entry 13 years ago. We have steady 15-20 knot winds, we’re on a broad reach and it actually is very comfortable on board. Frank went to bed with instructions not to wake him up for the crossing (he’s done this 5 times, so his priorities reflect that) – so I was on my own. As she approached the line, knowing that I was not going to be able to jump in and push the line down, I was worried Silver Lining would slice right through it allowing the northern hemisphere to flow into the southern hemisphere, wreaking who knows what havoc to global navigation. But in fact, she was just picking up speed to vault over the equatorial line. Moments before I saw a shooting star piercing the Southern Cross, in expectation. A brilliant leap it was.
The sky was full of stars above, some rapidly moving cloud cover on the horizon behind us, was making the rising red crescent moon look like it was rocking as the clouds exposed then covered one side then the other of the moon’s tips. It’s a beautiful night for a sail.
With such a spectacular performance on SL’s part, and the good omens from the sky; I’m hoping Neptune understands that it’s a sin to wake a sleeping teen, and his ceremonies will have to wait till morning. I did throw one Sea’s 
chocolate into the ocean for him. I thought that was a pretty significant sacrifice! And assuming he can’t spell See’s, I hope he will agree that it is an appropriate one too.
I guess we’ll be sharing mimosas with Neptune for breakfast in a few hours.
xoxomo