A day as a galley rat

Today the new year celebration happened and i was going to be galley rat, or backis,, as always…

Today I experienced how it could be to work in the kitchen for 15 hours. The day started at 07:30 when we woke up and 07:55 we were ready for our shift before the arrival to La Estaca. The weather as always was very hot but I knew I was going inside the kitchen for the next hour, what I didn't know was that I was also going to be galley rat in the harbour as well.

Basically, galley rat means chefs helper here on Gunilla and you get to help them with the food as well as being responsible for the dishes and the break snack or fika as we call it. But when you are in a harbour the rest of the crew on the ship doesn't eat at different times instead, they all eat at once and therefore it becomes stressful for some hours and then quite easy for a couple of hours.

But today there was a key difference, today the new year celebration was going to be because we were out sailing on new year. This meant that the number of things to do around the time of dinner was tripled it felt like. It was a really nice meal though and the chefs made awesome food for us all but you were also stressed all the time. The only times where we really had some time off was an hour and twenty minutes as a break in the middle of the day when things weren’t stressful as well as when we ate dinner.

Though someone has to do it and this time it was my turn. It was a stressful but fun day with a lot of new experiences with the other galley rats I just hope for the coming time here on Gunilla i don’t have to be galley rat more often as I have already been it a lot before today.

Tim Ekdahl, midships