By Matthew Maples

Comedy struck the Starboard Watch early this morning as the ship's dog and mascot, Sirius, did his duty on the poop deck, just close enough to the helmsman for her to step on it - worse than a cartoon banana, the droppings almost caused voyage crewmember Masayo Takahashi to lose her balance. Surely such a mess cannot be left to ripen, so "Woody" van Grondelle and I arrived with brushes, water and squeegees in tow. A good deck swabbing done with just enough vigor to remove Sirius's duties, yet executed carefully so as not to let the poop-water going over the side end up in the Mate's open porthole -A sure recipe for a rough day! At one point Masayo was dutifully keeping the ship's course on one leg, keeping her balance tenaciously as Woody scrubbed the bottom of her shoe!  As I sat down after the job, Sirius jumped up and licked my face. It wasn't even the worst kiss I've ever had.

Sirius however, is a good dog, he is only 9 months old, with a face that begs instantaneous forgiveness for whatever extra work he creates us. Like his captain, he is Frisian - a breed created for farmers to kill moles in the fields. While we don't have moles on the ship, Sirius still tries to keep the ocean at bay by biting the waves that come through the scuppers.
He responds (most of the time!) to commands in Dutch. I am trying to learn some Dutch, but the dog still possesses a far higher Dutch vocabulary than I. My few years learning German in high school are doing me little good on a Dutch ship. Thankfully they are patient with my stutterings and my errant German-ish pronunciation.

On a far less comical matter, our dishwasher Hobie fell ill with a terrible grinding and groaning sound in the morning. Klaas said it was even "louder than the engines!"  Hand washing would be means to an end this morning. Good thing it happened on my galley duty day. After breakfast however, "Dr."Marius Le Roux did his engineering voodoo, and now Hobie seems to be well and back on the job, just in time to clean up after lunch. A crisis averted? Only time will tell.

I was constantly impressed by the enthusiasm of Peru for our tall ship during the Callau festival and could not turn down the unceasing requests for "Photograph! Photograph!"  You'd mistake us for rock stars. While I personally did not get to see much of the country outside Callau, the people that came to see us leave me with a outstanding impression of friendliness that the Peruvian people display. We left Callau, Peru yesterday morning as military bands dedicated their brass to the tall ships leaving port. Of all the ships , Europa was the sole vessel not associated with a military. The naval forces of Argentina, Spain, Mexico, Ecuador, Columbia, Venezuela, Portugal, Uruguay and of course, Peru were represented handsomely by their combined armada of swan-white tall ships.

We are now motor-sailing to Guayaquil, Ecuador. While, there has been enough of a breeze to sail on, we have a tight schedule to keep to make our date with Guayaquil. A schedule, I ask the mate, Marteyn Blok, that "was meant for a motor ship" "And planes" he replied. As of our two'o'clockie all-hands meeting today, we have left Callau 186 miles in our wake, with 545 left on our forward horizon to Guayaquil.

Soon after leaving Callau, a black object was seen on the water. It looked like a opaque sphere, with a spike straight into the air. As we grew closer the guesses began to come in, like a bookie's house receiving bets before the big boxing match. "A dead whale!" "A sleeping shark!" "It's a mine"
yelled voyage crewmember Peter Kentish. Closer inspection revealed it to be a rather bloated, very dead sea lion.

A much more inspirational sight was seen in the early evening of yesterday, as a pod of dolphins swam around our bow. There was just enough of a sliver of twilight from the horizon to illuminate the wake of the dolphins as they breached. This coupled with the phosphorescent, static-like green glow of small sea creatures disturbed by the dolphins left small streaks of light and shining wave that voyage crewmember Nate Engel described as "ghost trails". I find it to be a fitting description.

In perhaps some of our most exciting news of all, our ship's doctor, Leen Braber, was knighted in a surprise announcement given at a Queen's Day party the Europa hosted for the Dutch embassy and citizens abroad in Peru. It was in recognition for over 19 years of work (with the Koningin Wilhelmina fonds) to combat cancer. He still volunteers his time with the Dutch Cancer Association.  He actually did not want to stay for the party, but was kept there by Klaas who insisted that he must stay because the captain said so. The next day I asked him how his first day as a knight was going and he told me he was considering turning it down, presumably because he did not do his work for recognition alone. Everyone else, on the other hand, knows that he deserves his knighthood. Three Cheers for our ship's doctor, Leen!