The third day of our stay in Brazil not unexpectedly produced quite a few tired faces. Yesterday´s New Year´s Eve celebrations are an obvious explanation. Well, shortly before lunch we had a distinguished visitor, Sweden´s Ambassador to Brazil Ms. Margareta Winberg and her entourage. Our guests had a thorough guided tour of the East Indiaman and we hope they were satisfied.
 
In the afternoon it was the first “open ship" of the year and of this port-call. A queue of several hundred meters was winding around the square in front of the ship, just like a snake. In spite of the fact that they had to wait for an hour and a half to get on board there were only happy faces. As compared to Cádiz we could note that things were much more laid back here. No stress and people seemed happy enough. An impressive 4,000 people visited the “Götheborg" during the day and in view of the interest, two open-ship hours were added,
 
The Swedish programme for the evening was the opening of a Swedish miniature film festival. For about a week Swedish films are to be shown at a cinema close to the ship, showing everything from “The guy in the grave next door" to Ingmar Bergman. This evening´s film, “House of Angels", was preceded by an opening speech by the Swedish Ambassador. There was not a single seat left and judging from the reactions, the audience really liked this film with its Swedish summer landscape setting. But as a Swede it was a bit odd seeing a Swedish film in northern Brazil.

Logbook Dec. 31st - Jan. 1st, 2006, at 0800                 
(Translated from Swedish)

Position: S 008 dgrs 03.8 mnts, W 034 dgrs 52.3 mnts
Course:   dgrs
24 hour distance:  nm

Fire and inspection round every half hour

Dec. 31st
0945 Fresh water taken on board
1000 Health authorities on board
1615-1700 Warped ship one ship´s length forward
 
Jan. 1st
         Night watch officer on duty and 4 students
      
Other non-logbook data

Air pressure: 1013 mb
Temperature: 28 dgrs C
Water temp.: 28 dgrs C
Wind speed:  knots (relative)
Wave height:
Weather:
Water depth:6 m
SOG:   knots
LOG:   knots

Comments: Well moored starboard side at Marco Zero, Recife, Brazil