At sea frivolity and entertainment, i.e. Neptune Olympics!

What a wild and wacky week!  I wondered what we were going to do for 7 days crossing the Atlantic to Ghana and now we know.  Maybe it's because we are in 25,000 feet of ocean or in the Doldrums or something, but this has been absolutely crazy.


First all of the students are divided into groups called Seas: Bering, Red, Yellow, Mediterrean, Baltic, Carribbean, Arabian, and Aegean.  We as LLCs called ourselves Sea Salts and the faculty and staff were called Luna for " Lunacy". We have several young persons in LLC, 27, 36 and early 40s who organized us.  We learned cheers, songs, had banners, shredded laundry bags for pompoms, had head bands, etc.and practiced for 2 days prior to events.  Wednesday evening was the kickoff at 9 pm.  We, all dressed in white (each Sea had a different color) gathered in the Lounge and entered the Union as a group. We sang and cheered our way to the front, where thank God  we had seats.  Then all of the other Seas came in one by one,  The noise from the yelling and cheering was outrageous.  There was so much testerone in the auditorium, it moved the ship.


Each Sea paraded its banner, did its cheer and song, including our group.  Our men even did a pyramid with Amy on top which was a real hit.  Rick was in the second tier on top of poor Jeff and Dick. Each element was judged by a panel of faculty and staff and guess who won!  We had perfect 10s and the next best had 2 9s and 1-10.

The Olympics were held the next day.  Games included volleyball, basketball, balancing pingpong ball on a spoon, 3-legged race, synchronized swimming, etc.  The day dawned, raining torrential showers but by noon had stopped.  The crew squigeed off the decks and swimming was first event.  I can't begin to describe our team.  Only photos can tell the story.  They were dressed in swimming trunks, (except Boyd, age 86, who wore his whitey BVDs), life jackets, shower caps and white towel capes with S on back and swam to Superman music.  It was ridiculously funny. The pool area was packed with students who hooted and hollered of course.  The did their synchornized swimming as best they could with life jackets on !The students were actually very original and good, others were not.

The LLLs then went down to watch Tug-of-War.  Our team consisted of the 5 oldest women in the group, 88, 80, 77, 75 and 73.  They walked on canes and I thought the guys on the other end were going to die.  They didn't know what to do. The original plan was the women were going to pretend to pull and then let go and let the guys fall down.  Finally, the women just kind of slid over the line and let them win.  What hoots they received.

Jim, Theresa, Carol and I competed in building a tower from 2 decks of cards.  I had googled how to do it and we had practised for days.  Well!  We knew these kids were smarter than we are, but didn't imagine how inventive they would be. We were allowed to tear or mutilate the cards (didn't know that beforehand) and they had towers12 stories high.  Ours immediately collapsed and our group kept coming back to us,saying do it this way, or that way.  We were miserable failures.  The rolling of the ship didn't help!

                                                                         

By the time the games were over, we were exhausted and headed to the Lounge for cocktails.  Then  the crew prepared a great barbecue - ribs, hot dogs, hamburgers, potato salad, baked beans, etc. and even ice cream for dessert.  We stuffed ourselves on the ribs and ice cream. Then at 8 pm, the closing ceremonies were held.  Of course, emphasis had been made on good sportsmanship, fair play, etc. but still were the annoucements were made as to the winners, there were...not boos exactly, but a 3-way tie for 3rd place satisfied a lot of students.


The Sea Salts didn't win anything in the Olympics.  Synchonized swimming was disqualified because they took too much time, mainly in getting out of the pool and people wanting to take pictures.  However, we did win the best cheering.


The next morning many students had tests and others slept in, so it was a very quiet ship.  We did a tour of the bridge. Joan

Scary thought, That is Joan at the controls of our ship!  EEEEK!!!

Four (4) engines driving 2 shafts w/staggered propellers that can be feathered to any degree.

Max speed to date was 32.5 knots running for high tide as we exited the Amazon.

Needed the depth of high tide as we only had 18 inches depth entering the river. Rick