A regular day at sea

The day was pretty much like the past three days. We got woken up at 3:36 am and got dressed for our watch at 4 am.

As we were planning on anchoring outside the coast at São Miguel later that morning this was supposed to be our last watch with our watch leader whom I like extra much and would love to have the entire trip. Therefore, I was a bit disappointed that I was going to be post on the watch. Being post means that you have three chores, two of them being boring. I started as a helmsman which is the more stimulating one, I got to steer the boat. The other two are lifebuoy guard and lookout, which are two important assignments, but you basically stand there staring out into nowhere making sure everyone is safe and nothing collides with Gunilla.

The watch went on and the only unusual thing was that I had to be a helmsman for over an hour and not 30 minutes as usual. This was because the lifebuoy guard and lookout had to help the others take down a sail in the front of the boat. But since helmsman is my favorite position, I didn’t mind so much, and it made the time go a lot faster. So, before I knew it, we struck the bell eight times and the watch was about to be over. However, there is a tradition that we do every last watch: sing a song for the watch leader which the watch has made. So we sang our remade version of “Twinkle twinkle little star” and then we had a well-earned breakfast before going to sleep or rest until lunch.

We had our lunch and after that, it was time for our lessons of the day. We had a book talk, an update about Ukraine and Russia, and lastly some own studies on the schedule.

When the lessons were over, we were supposed to have anchor already however the last bit had taken a bit longer than expected so Midship had to have another watch. This one was a bit different from the others, so we went under deck to clean instead of spending the entire time on deck. I had to clean the small mess room which, trust me, was very necessary. Since the boat had rocked a lot during the trip a lot of stuff had fallen on the canvas, and guess what. We are 43 students, and no one loves to pick it up, so under the benches, we found a box of marmalade, a sirup bottle, a pancake, and a lot of other disgusting things as well. But we got away the smell of sour milk and now it’s relatively clean at least.

We did some more small chores around the deck and then we anchored outside the beautiful town Ponta Delgado where we will sleep over the night, before going into town tomorrow.

Tea Svahn – midships