The Starboard Minds Win

I will start at the end, because I have been waiting weeks to write this sentence. We won.

The Starboard Minds, consisting of Priya, Yuki, Tiny, the cadet whose name I have now learned and will never forget again (it is Daniel, and he is from Cebu, and he knows every flag in the world), and me, won the Wednesday trivia night in the crew lounge, by three points.

On the whiteboard it says "Bridge Crew", because Marco, who keeps score, said "The Starboard Minds" was too long and he was running out of board. Priya has asked for a correction to be issued in writing. Marco has said he will think about it. He will not think about it.

Preparation

There had been preparation. I want that on record. Yuki had built a spreadsheet of every question asked since the voyage began, sorted by category, and identified our weak areas. Our weak areas are, in order, sport, opera, and anything to do with the Royal Family, which everyone had assumed I would know because I am British. I do not. I know roughly as much about the Royal Family as I do about eggplant, and I feel similarly about both.

Tiny had been quizzing me about cars, on the theory that if a car question came up, I should be fast. "Fast like the Miata," he said. "Not fast like the Miata before the turbo."

Priya's preparation consisted of telling me, at breakfast, "Do not let me down." She smiled while she said it. It did not help.

The night

The rounds were general knowledge, geography, music, food, a picture round of famous ships, and a final round which the quizmaster, the Third Officer, described only as "mechanical".

We were steady. Daniel carried the geography round almost alone. Priya got the opera question about Puccini before the Third Officer had finished reading it, and then turned slightly pink, because now everyone knew. Yuki answered a question on the boiling point of water at altitude with a precision that made the Third Officer check his own answer sheet. Tiny got the dominoes question, obviously. I contributed a confident wrong answer on the Royal Family and a correct one on the capital of Mongolia, which I knew only because of a conference in 2014 that I will not describe.

Going into the last round we were two points behind the Galley Wizards. Elena's team. Elena does not lose. Elena simply waits.

The mechanical round

Question one was about lubricants. Big Kev's team, the Engine Room, got that one and cheered as if they had won the whole thing, even though they were last by a distance.

Question four was the one.

"In what year," said the Third Officer, "was the Mazda MX5, sold in America as the Miata, first launched?"

I did not look at anyone. I did not need to. I wrote 1989 on the sheet, in capital letters, and underlined it twice. Tiny saw what I had written, put one enormous hand flat on the table, and laughed his foredeck laugh, which I am told is audible from the bow and which certainly made the Galley Wizards look round.

There was also a final bonus question on what a turbocharger actually does, which I answered in more detail than the sheet had room for. Yuki had to take the pen away from me.

The result

Marco read out the scores slowly, the way he imagines a television presenter would, with pauses. Engine Room last. The Deckhands fourth. The Night Watch third. Galley Wizards second.

Bridge Crew, which is to say the Starboard Minds, first, on twenty four.

Priya turned to me and raised her hand for a high five. I raised mine. She caught it, and instead of the usual slap and release, she held on. Not for long. A second, maybe two. Long enough that Tiny looked at the ceiling, Yuki looked at his spreadsheet, and Daniel, who is twenty one, looked at me with an expression I last saw on my own face at a school disco in 1987.

Then she let go and said, perfectly calmly, "That is the standard I expect," and went to collect our prize, which was a large bag of crisps and the right to choose the Saturday film.

Debrief

There was a debrief, of course. It was much shorter than the last one. It consisted of Priya saying "Good," looking at each of us in turn, and then saying "Again next week," and then, to me specifically, "You were useful."

I have had performance reviews that meant less.

Big Kev came over afterwards and said the Miata question was rigged. Tiny said Kev was only upset because there had not been a question about a fourteen cylinder engine. Kev said there should always be a question about a fourteen cylinder engine, and the evening ended, as so many do here, in a debate about engines that nobody will ever win.

I went to bed and Container, as usual, was already there. I told her we had won. She did not open her eyes, but her tail moved once, which I am choosing to count.