Another nightshift with sleepy eyes

Life at Gunilla is not always as glamorous as it might seem. Seasickness, cockroaches, sleeplessness and toilet cleaning is a part of the everyday life at this boat. Yesterdays nightshift was for me one of the worst kind of shift which contained plenty of stuff you would not wish even for your enemy.

At 7.30 pm I got woken up from my nap to get ready for my shift that starts at eight o´clock. As soon as I opened my eyes I felt my head beating from the headache that have somehow stayed with me during the whole day. I rose from my bunk like a dead rises from the grave in horror movies, slowly put on my clothes and then with sweeping, painful steps made my way up to deck.

We started the watch with doing a tacking- maneuver which involves a lot pulling and hauling. After this energy absorbing hour the workforce was sent back under deck to clean pretty much everything. As always, I succeeded with getting the worst mission, the toilets. One more hour was passed by crunching over one toilet after another and when it finally was time for the break I did not have the energy to even eat a sandwich. The last two hours of the watch was full of basically nothing. I fought for my life for two hours to keep my eyes open and ordered myself to stand up only to not fall asleep.

When the next watch took over I didn’t even have the energy to feel relieved. I made my way back to bed, put my head on the pillow and during the seconds while my eyes shut close I thought that I am actually very happy to be right here, on this boat.

• Clara, Midship