July 4th!

Our multi-national (9 nations represented aboard) crew takes shipmately fun in celebrating everyone’s national day. The theme for this American Independence Day, just called the 4th of July, was a “Backyard BBQ”, with the main hatch being the “backyard”. Threads to the theme were “do your own thing” and “chillin like a villain” with an emphasis on not organizing anything really-just like a regular 4th in your back yard! No speeches.

Some of the crew came in costume too- we had the statue of liberty, Barbie and Ken, Marilyn Monroe, Barack Obama and a lot of people in red, white and blue. The main event of the afternoon was a “build your own bathing suit” competition – bathing suits could be made of anything other than standardbathing suit material. The eventual winners’ suits were made of duct tape and a shower curtain. Instead of softball or wiffle ball we had Turtle races…Yes, even the turtles we’re taking to Pitcairn got in on the fun-they are doing fine by the way. A track had been built, complete with starting gate, finish line, lanes and little canvas American flags. Anyone who bet on turtle #3 made a good choice because he won every race (turtle #2 slept through most of the event, coming out of his shell long enough to take a few steps backwards in his own lane). The big Dominican BBQ was pulled out of the hold and set up on the well-deck (on a platform, with water buckets standing by) and after the coals were glowing hot, the mates cooked up chicken and steaks all afternoon. As Sunday is Donald’s regular day off, Fred added to the BBQ with potato salad, bean salad and apple pie. Ollie shot all these goings on with his video camera and a beautiful curious little bird on a long voyage by air, maybe even to Russia, settled on the extended microphone of his camera when he wasn’t looking. Then she flew off.

The evening ended with shooting off some old flares while listening to Jimi Hendrix’s Woodstock Star Spangled Banner virtuoso performance on guitar.
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