Thursday, May 6, 1999  Salinopolis, Brazil

Greetings cyber friends,

The Starship has crossed the Equator at 03:04 am this morning and made it safely into Salinopolis. Crossing the equator was a special event for the crew, it started with a surprise shower (for those that were sleeping) of soap and water (with a spritzer of Caramel Sauce) followed by a quick blast of flour and brown sugar and a loud sounding of the ships horn.


Poor Trevor is after his well taken Equator treatment...

We consider crossing into the Southern Hemisphere meaningful because we did it together as a team and this is a significant milestone that we have looked forward to. The celebration ended with the crew toasting and some nice chatting away on the foredeck with guest appearances of the moon and the occassional shooting star. We thanked Neptune for his hospitality and for giving us flat water for the crossing.

Our friend Everton in his garden with a feshly picked mango in his hands.

Clearing into Brazil, and meeting the Pilot to bring us into Salinopolis took us all morning. We spoke to our contact last night and thought that our plans for arrival were squared away. Upon arrival at 7am, we radioed the local pilot station only to find out that they weren't aware of our being here. The language barrier didn't help matters much, we did however find out that Salinopoplis is not an official clearing station and they is no such thing as a harbor or official dock. To top things off they said that they are not used to dealing with private yachts at all. They weren't going to let us in!. After many phone calls to and from Germany and Brazil we finally got in contact with the Pilot Mr. Everton Da Ponte Lima. He quickly arranged for a pilot boat to come out and guide us through the extremely narrow and shallow channel which without could have left us high and dry. Our "anchorage" at low tide looks like a big sand box with a just enough water in the middle to keep us afloat. That means we will be doing anchor watches tonight to make sure the tidal currents with a range of 16 ft do not move us anywhere.   Everton was very generous by going out of his way, not only helping us with getting appropriate paperwork going, which will last well into tomorrow, but was also kind enough to take us to his home and share with us the fruits of his garden. We took home lots of mangos and coconuts for the crew to enjoy.

See you tomorrow....

Monika & Angelica