April 15, 2024 Sea Day, Tax Day, Second crossing of the Equator, 20 days left of 138

 Well our taxes have already been filed and our tax return is in the bank. 

Happy Birthday Katie! We hope your family is treating you special. We are thinking of you and sending special Birthday wishes.

Today is another memorable day in the middle of the Ocean. We learned that there is a buoy to mark zero degrees latitude and zero degrees longitude, where the prime meridian and the equator intersect. It has come to be named Null Island. The buoy named Soul is part of the PIRATA system, a set of 17 buoys installed in the tropical Atlantic Ocean since 1997 by the US, France, and Brazil. This is what it is suppose to look like. Who knew!

This is our ship tracker showing where we are in the world.

The Captain was asked if we were going to see this, and he said sorry no it is not planned. He then came back yesterday and said he had requested permission to circle the buoy from corporate and permission was granted. It is planned for 5:30 pm today.

In reality we were ready to experience this site, and no sighting was made. We learned that its last report was 45 days ago, and it was no where to be seen today. We still celebrated the spot. We were just 45 days too late. darn!

The rarest of all is the Emerald Shellback - a sailor who has crossed the Prime Meridian at the Equator - the zero latitude intersection. We have the certificates to prove we did it.                                                 

You would think that with all the traffic being rerouted around Africa we would be seeing more ships. We saw a couple today, so it was so rare I documented it on our walk.                                                   

It has been a great day, what a way to celebrate as we have 20 days left of this adventure.