Öckerö gymnasium

The final step

Rain, rain for the first time ever while we are sailing. I guess that we wouldn’t have gotten the entire experience if it hadn’t rained one single day.

Me being me and seeing an opportunity of course put on bath shorts and have nothing but that, my shoes and lifejacket on me for the duration of the storm and let me tell you right now, it was pretty cold. 

But that was not how the day started, it started like most days actually. A designated person enters every cabin and makes sure that everybody is awake. I as usual stay in my bed for as long as I can because of the fact that I have slept for a little less then seven hours every night for almost two and a half moths. So I am understandably getting more and more tired every morning, it has actually gotten to a point were i choose not to eat breakfast in favor of sleeping.

But after forcing myself out of bed I go to our everyday morning meeting. (Only in harbor.) Our new captain tells us what we are going to do in case that we have an oil breach onboard. He also tells us that we will be leaving harbor at ten o’clock. Since I am not due to have watch duties before twelve o’clock I go right back to sleep. Obviously my extra sleeping time passes extremely fast and it does feel like I only slept for five minutes, as I got out of bed the feeling the seasickness twisting and turning my stomach in ways I didn’t know where possible crept up on me.

But no matter how tired or seasick you are you must be at the watch switch. The only exception for not being there is if you are sick. And even if you are sick it is not a guarantee that you won’t have to be there. But anyways we get told that ironically two hours after we have been shown how to handle an oil breach we get one onboard. I swear the starboard watch doesn’t like us, first they destroy a sail that we had to fix and that was difficult in itself since it was the second highest and third biggest, and now they do this.

We get to do the cleaning part, of course. Since I was seasick, I got to go and be lookout after not being able to handle all the instruments without puking. And then far of in the distance I can see it, a big black cloud without an end. Finally we will have rain while we are out sailing! I guess that we wouldn’t have gotten the entire experience if it hadn’t rained one single day. Me being me and seeing an opportunity of course put on bath shorts and have nothing but that, my shoes and lifejacket on me for the duration of the storm and let me tell you right now, it was pretty cold. But it made me feel alive and clean. I could finally think straight. Only eleven days left of this journey that we have had to endure. Look how far we have come.

They say that every journey begins with a single step, while that is true, you may wonder how a journey ends. We have begun with this journeys last step. We have experienced much but maybe not what we expected. We have gotten to know ourselves better and now as we approach Miami the transformation that has taken place in everyone is coming to an end. It has been a difficult journey with many laughs and cries. It feels like time has stopped for two and a half month and that we will come home to december the thirteenth 00.01. I thought that this would be a place to call home in time and, maybe that time will come but not in this journey, not for me at least. You don’t know the future until it has transpired and sometimes you wish that you would have done something in your past differently to prevent a certain future. Although my stay here have had its ups and downs and home is all that I think of, I am still happy that I have gotten this far. 

To the eyes of the world we have always been a large fellowship but, I actually came to this ship hoping that we could mend this broken fellowship, we have not. We have made new groups and they are tight, almost unbreakable. I feel sorry for the ones who are not in a group at all. The hard truth is that everybody deep inside wants to come home now. Home, home is but a memory for me. I don’t recall the possibility to sleep more then seven hours, nor the good feeling after having done nothing but taking it easy for 24 hours straight. To eat actual food that tastes good. Home, I am coming for you, please be as I remember you.

Adrian

Publicerad:

Öckerö seglande gymnasieskola
Björnhuvudsvägen 45
475 31 Öckerö

Telefon: 031-97 62 00
e-post: kommun@ockero.se