Another day on our voyage upon the deep blue sea

The second of March started dark and early as it always does for our watch. Midnight we all stood up on deck ready for work. On the night watch I was working in the kitchen with Hanna which was pleasant, but working inside isn’t my favourite because of the sea sickness that creeps on to me without the fresh air you get on deck.

But on the other hand working in the kitchen is pretty nice because we are able to take it easy after our chores and in Sweden I part time work at a café were the choirs and kitchen is quite similar to Gunillas. The night “fika” we prepared wasn’t anything outside the ordinary unfortunately but the watch enjoyed it and the rest of the watch rolled on smoothly.

It’s the second full day out to sea and we are making good speed up to 8 knots. We got “purred” around 11 o’clock. For lunch we ate a stew that tasted like ketchup and barbecue sauce combined, with bites of chicken and potato. It kind of tasted like a polish dish I had ate as a child and the meal was pretty good.

After lunch I got up on deck and faced 30 degrees of burning heat which still amazes me after almost three weeks. Now I was a part of the working squad. After the watch shift that started with some words from our captain Anders, we were ready to work. For approximately an hour we cleaned and scrubbed all the walls you could imagine up on deck. After we had a lecture about global winds by our watch leader Magnus. I remember we had a similar lecture by David Mellberg in our freshman year but a refresh was well needed and it was really interesting. And the fact that we are actually using the winds for our gain by sailing you get a whole other understanding about the subject. The hours was flying by and after some sailing drills the watch was done.

Quarter past four our lessons started and the first thing on the agenda was a port review were we went through our opinions on Surinam. The things said was mostly positive which I agree upon, it was a good studying location and very interesting with all the different cultures and religion captured in a country with a population of only 600 thousand. It was also my first time in South America which also was really cool. The only negative thing we came up with was the distance between the port we was placed at and the capital city Paramaribo. Lessons went on as usual after and for dinner we got a delicious dish, mango chicken with fried rice I think I ate three portions.

Last thing that happened before I had to sleep to get up for our night shift was that me and Magnus our watch leader did a pull-up challenge were we did 6 pull-ups every minute for 20 minutes. 120 pull-ups in 20 minutes is quite a hard challenge for me and I would say I did maybe 90 or something like that, but Magnus flew up as he did last time we tried it and he completed the whole challenge without any big troubles.

It was time to sleep and the day began to take an end. I took a shower, ate some cereals and went to sleep. And so the second of March took an end.

William Strandell