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Crossing the Equator — that imaginary great circle around the earth known by sailors as LAT 0° 0’ 0” – has long been cause for celebration among seafarers. In fact, it’s believed sailors on French ships began commemorating Equator crossings as early as the sixteenth century and other nationalities including the English, Spanish and Italians soon followed.

While no one knows for sure why sailors began celebrating an Equator crossing, it’s believed the ceremony served two purposes. The first was just to give sailors an opportunity to have some fun by parodying a Christian baptism, but with a crew member dressed up as King Neptune instead of St. John doing the honours. The second was to create a rite of passage by which young men could be accepted into the veteran brotherhood of seasoned sailors.

Equator crossing ceremonies were usually quite rowdy and involved copious quantities of rum, and the occasional dunking of inductees or “Pollywogs” into the ocean. But once baptized, Pollywogs were welcomed into the elite fraternity of the “Shellbacks” by King Neptune himself and awarded all the privileges that came with this new status.

Cruise ships have long embraced the whole Equator crossing concept, and while their ceremonies are watered down (pardon the pun!) from the days of olde, they still provide a source of great fun and amusement for passengers.

Our crossing ceremony aboard the Crystal Symphony began at 11:15 am as our ship crossed that imaginary line in the sea called the Equator (we could feel the bump as we went over it!) and King Neptune and his Loyal Court came parading into the pool area with a collection of Pollywog passengers in tow. The Pollywogs were called one by one to the band shell where a prosecutor read the charges against them (including heinous crimes like making Caesar Salad in the bathroom sink), and then declared guilty by King Neptune.

Once convicted, the offending Pollywog was taken to the ‘surgery’ where the doctors and nurse cut them open, cleansed them of their sins, made them kiss a briny fish, and tossed them into the swimming pool to be baptized as a Shellback. At one point our Captain Ralf Zander objected to the mess in the pool, but he was overruled by King Neptune and forced to endure surgery and baptism himself to atone for his interruption.  The crowd roared with delight when the good-natured captain was tossed into the pool in full uniform!

The entire ceremony was great fun, and attended by several hundred people who crowded into the two decks surrounding the pool area so they could capture the event on film. In particular, the ship’s comedian Jimmy Travis did a great job as King Neptune, throwing in several unscripted lines that had everyone – including his court members – in stitches.

As our ship sailed north beyond the Equator, our hilarious rite of passage came to an end. We had left Valparaiso with lots of Pollywogs on board, but we would soon be transiting the Panama Canal with a boat load of Shellbacks.

The whining sound of tenders being lowered from davits on the starboard side of the ship should have been the first sign that something had gone amuck in Puerto Madryn, Argentina. After all, we were supposed to be docking at the pier, not taking tenders ashore for our day in this small seaside town in the Patagonian province of Chabut near the scenic Valdes Peninsula. But it was early, and we were still half asleep and in desperate need of our first coffee of the day.

However, there was no mistaking the next sign as the Captain’s voice came crackling through the public address system a few minutes later.

 “As you may have noticed,” Captain Trym Slevag told us in a slight Norwegian accent, “we’ve put the tenders in the water because we won’t be able to dock at the pier as planned.  There’s a freighter parked in our spot at the pier that had a small fire early this morning and doesn’t have any power to move right now. I’ve been talking to everyone I could find onshore for the last hour to see what can be done. In the meantime, we’ve sent our tenders ashore to see if they can find a suitable place for us to operate them from.” 

By now hundreds of people were up and milling around the ship, anxiously awaiting permission to go ashore and begin their much anticipated shore excursions. There had been hundreds of tours booked for Puerto Madryn to amazing places like the Punta Tombo penguin colony (one of the largest in South America); Puerto Piramides to see Southern Right whales; the Punta Loma Reserve where there’s a large colony of sea lions; and the colonial town of Geiman with its famous Welsh tea houses. And since most of the tours were scheduled to start soon, they were now in peril of being missed or cancelled. 

About 30 minutes later the tenders returned to our ship and the Captain provided an update over the PA system. He told us there was no suitable place in town to operate the tenders from, mainly because the pier was far too high for the small tenders to safely embark and disembark passengers. An available berth further along the pier and another possibility at a smaller pier were both in waters that were too shallow for our large cruise ship. And there were no tug boats in the port that could move the freighter out of our spot at the pier.  

We were out of options to get people ashore in time for their tours, so they were all cancelled with full refunds. 

It was now 9:00 a.m., and the Captain announced he would be putting a full day’s program of activities in place aboard the ship despite the fact that he was continuing to work with local officials to find a way to get us ashore. Officers and crew members, some of whom may have been given shore leave for the day, were now called into action to entertain, feed and care for all 2,500 passengers at the last minute. 

The response was amazing. Within 20 minutes Cruise Director Anthony Richards was on the PA system announcing a complete set of events and activities for the day, including sports tournaments, dance classes, trivia contests, a destination lecture and a poolside barbecue. And within 90 minutes, freshly printed and revised daily activity newsletters called the “Cruise Compass” were being distributed to all cabins. 

At 11:00 a.m. the Captain came back on the PA system with the news we had all been expecting: we were pulling up anchor and heading out to sea as there was nothing local officials could do to free up our docking space, or set up a safe place for our tenders to disembark passengers. It was disappointing news, but we all knew it was not the fault of our Captain and crew. They had handled the situation flawlessly, had kept us informed and up to date on what was happening throughout the morning, had done a marvelous job in setting up a day of replacement activities at the last minute, and had been diplomatic and apologetic throughout. In fact, later that evening Captain Selvag even sent a personal letter to every guest explaining the situation again, and offering his apologies and regrets. 

However, that didn’t seem to appease a small group of passengers who began brewing a mini-rebellion.  They developed a conspiracy theory that the Captain had purposely kept them from going ashore so they would be forced to spend more money on board the ship. Believe it or not, the group got so many people worked up that they demanded and got a meeting with one of the officers to air their grievances, and the Captain made an announcement  the next morning referencing the false rumour and providing an explanation once again.  The announcement, like all of the others before it, was repeated in the major languages aboard ship including English, Spanish, German and French. I advised the Captain to ply the mutineers with Pisco Sours, serenade them with rebellious accordion music, and lead them in a mass audience tangao dance. It didn’t work, and the South American rebels are threatening to make placards and picket the ship in a future port (I’m not kidding).  

In my view, if there is any blame for the palaver at Puerto Madryn, it is clearly in the hands of the local port authorities. They didn’t inform our ship of the problems at the pier until we approached early that morning, and seemed either uninterested or incapable of figuring out a solution in a timely fashion.  I’m sure they will be hearing about their shameful behaviour from the dozens of local tour operators, restaurants and gift shops who lost a fortune in profits that day, as well as from the hundreds of local tourism industry workers who may have lost out on wages and tips.

If there’s a lesson in all of this, it’s that passengers should never take for granted that a particular port of call or favorite shore excursion will automatically be available. There are all sorts of reasons why a port or tour might be skipped, including rough seas, emergencies on board ship, or the lack of suitable docking space. So don’t put off doing or seeing something that may be available earlier in the cruise, or you may be sadly disappointed. 

But as long as the captains, officers and crew handle these types of situations as well as the team on the Radiance did, it won’t be a disappointment that lasts for long – at least, it won’t be for those who don’t engage in silly conspiracy theories and question the integrity of their own captain.

The winds began to howl and the seas started to churn as we sailed out of protected waters south of Ushuaia to begin our transit around Cape Horn.

We were about to enter one of the most hazardous shipping routes in the world, where fierce winds can blow around the world almost unimpeded by land, ocean currents are dangerously strong, and furious waves can attain heights of up to 30 metres (100 feet) as they funnel through the shallow water south of the Horn.  At least we didn’t have to worry about icebergs, which in winter can create an additional hazard! 

Cape Horn is a tiny island located at the most southerly point in South America, just 650 km (400 miles) from Antarctica. It’s also the northern boundary for Drake Passage, which is the main waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans for ships too large or unable to navigate the narrower Strait of Magellan and the Beagle Channel.  

Sir Francis Drake discovered the passage in 1578 after his ships were caught in a storm and blown south of the Strait of Magellan to the south of Tierra del Fuego. However, the passage was never explored until Dutch navigators, seeking an alternative route between the seas, sailed through it in 1616, and named the southernmost point of land “Kapp Hoorn” in honour of their native city of Hoorn in Holland. 

From the 1700s until the Panama Canal opened in 1914, Drake Passage was one of the world’s most important trade routes for clipper ships carrying cargo around the Horn between Europe and the Far East, South Pacific and Australia. However, the almost continuous state of nasty weather in the area, particularly for ships sailing from east to west against the wind, could make it impossible for them to cross the Horn for weeks at a time. Or worse, end up wrecked on the rocks. The challenge of making it ‘round the Horn’ has been recorded in the logs of many famous captains, including Captain Bligh during his fateful voyage to Tahiti aboard the HMAV Bounty. 

As our 90,000-ton, gas-turbine powered cruise ship inched closer to the southwest tip of the Horn and started to turn east, we began to understand how difficult it must have been for the crew of small, wooden sailing vessels to cope with these unpredictable conditions.  

By now, the winds had grown to near hurricane force, and were gusting at between 50 to 60 knots. Our bow was crashing through 10 to 15-foot seas in a light mist. A piercing rain mixed with a light hail was needling down on us. Passengers on the outside decks were holding on to rails and stanchions for support. And a small glass window was ripped from the roof of the Solarium Pool and came crashing down on the promenade deck. And we were crossing the easy way from west to east – with the wind and current at our stern! 

At this point, the cruise ship behind us, the Norwegian Sun, decided to turn tail and head north of the Cape in a slightly more protected strait. Sissies! But we pressed forward, with passengers grinning into the howling wind, snapping photos like crazy, and loving every minute of our historic passage across the Cape and into the annals of sailing history as seamen who have successfully sailed around the Horn.  

According to our captain, this entitled us to a number of special privileges, including the right to dine with one foot on the table, sport a tattoo of a full-rigged ship, and wear a gold loop earring in our left ear.  And if we ever make it around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa, we can add the right to place two feet on the table! 

Just a few miles north of Cape Horn, the bad weather disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, and we sailed into gentle seas, light winds and beautiful sunshine along the southwestern coast of Argentina. We had spent several hours in the rough seas around the Cape, and were certainly grateful for the positive change in weather. However, I wouldn’t have traded one minute of it for our fantastic adventure sailing around the Horn. And equally important, I would never have missed the opportunity to wear an improvised earring to dinner that night. However, I will leave Gail to deal with the tattoo!

Our second day in Valparaiso, Chile began with a light breakfast on the rooftop patio of the Hotel Gervasoni, from where we could see our ship tied up below us at a nearby pier.  

The Hotel Gervasoni is one of many elegant 19^th-century mansions in the Cerro Concepcion that sit on the edge of the hills that overlook the bay. Built around 1870 by a Croatian businessman, this boutique hotel features 15 rooms, some with Juliette balconies, several spacious black and white-tiled patios with views of the bay, a charming sitting room with fireplace, and a top-end restaurant with a good selection of Chilean wines from the nearby Maipo Valley.  Our room was comfortable and featured a small bathroom with a shower stall so tiny that we needed a shoe horn to get in to it (we could only be grateful we had encountered it before we embarked on the cruise).  

We had enjoyed our two nights at the Gervasoni, but it was now time to pull up anchor and board Royal Caribbean’s Radiance of the Seas for our voyage around the horn of South America. We were ready to begin the next leg of our adventure, and had no reservations about how easy it would be to get to our nearby ship and quickly ascend the gangplank – or so we thought. 

At noon, our taxi driver arrived at the hotel to take us to the ship, but he was apparently unfamiliar with the route. At least, that’s what we gathered from the palaver that followed in Spanish as several of our hotel staff excitedly tried to provide advice while the puzzled driver interrupted with questions, and everyone pointed out the window in different directions while I kept yelling “crucero, crucero!” 

Finally they agreed on a route, and we took our luggage to the taxi which was parked on a narrow, dead-end street at the back of the hotel. Since there was no place to turn around, our driver had to back his car up the crowded street and squeeze past cars parked on both sides with just inches to spare. He came so close to sideswiping several parked cars that we quickly attracted a crowd of concerned onlookers who in an effort to help began shouting out commands and frantically waving their arms to guide our driver along the street. By this time, we were beginning to wish we had taken a city bus!  

Amazingly, we made it safely up the street and down to the pier, where we found two long lines of passengers spilling outside the old “Terminal de Cruceros” and into the parking lot. We joined the shorter of the two snaking lines, and slowly made our way to the check-in counter some 90 minutes later. At the last minute, we were given two sets of immigration forms for one of our ports of call (Uruguay) and told we had to complete them before we checked in – something that requires great balance and penmanship, or access to extra copies of the blank forms. Since I had neither, Gail took on the challenge and successfully completed the forms using the back of a wine box for support – proof once again that wine really does provide amazing benefits to mankind.  

Once on board ship, we surveyed our spacious balcony stateroom, unpacked, and went on a quick tour of the vessel. Built in 2001, the 90,000-ton Radiance of the Seas holds 2,500 passengers and offers loads of public space over 12 spacious and elegant decks. The centre-piece of the Radiance is the beautiful seven-storey atrium with its ethereal glass-enclosed elevators that provide stunning views of either the ocean or the interior lobby. The ship also features two swimming pools (one called the solarium that is fully enclosed with a glass roof), more than 10 bars and lounges including the stunning Viking Crown Lounge perched high above the ship, a rock climbing wall, a billiard room and a full health spa and modern gym.  

By this time we were getting hungry, so we headed off to the Cascades Dining Room for our second seating reservation – a surprisingly late 9:00 p.m. start time for us Norte Americanos, but nothing unusual for the large contingent of South Americans and Europeans on board who routinely eat late. We were escorted by our waiter to a long table for 10 where we were joined by six Germans, two Brazilians and an English waiter – a kind of United Nations for shipboard diners without the translation services.  

Our Brazilian tablemates didn’t speak any English, so I tried to help out despite my Portuguese vocabulary being limited to basic pleasantries like please, thank you, and good night. However, I only succeeded in getting them a Spanish menu (hey, it looked like Portuguese to me!), helping them order the wrong food (it sounded good!) and annoying them with my futile attempt to communicate with sign language.

I think we’ll be moving to another dinner table tomorrow night, and hopefully one with tablemates who understand English or at least ones who like to play charades. And I plan to spend a lot more time drinking wine, taking valium and studying my new Spanish and Portuguese phrase books before we reach our next port of call in Puerto Montt, Chile!