A seafarers barbeque and saying goodbye

Today is a happy day. I, for one, had been looking forward to it since the first day when I found a grill under berth 10s foot board. Our head chef – Pontus – was the host of the party. The students who had their watch in the kitchen that day helped out with making dips and cutting up vegetables for the side salads. For the meats that day we had grilled tuna, sirloin steak and an assortment of different sausages. One of my favorite things on the barbeque that evening was grilled butternut squash.

I’ve never tasted butternut squash before, but it was delicious! We also had charred pineapple, garlic mayo, hummus, Caprese salad, feta cheese salad, coleslaw and a lot of different breads. We aren’t used to being served food on deck so we had to get creative with where we sat to eat. A few sat on the forecastle but a lot of us climbed up on the galley rooftop. We had to pass the plates hand to hand from the main deck up to the roof which resulted in quite a few mishaps with plates folding into taco shell shapes. Sadly you can’t eat paper plates. Instead you would, once opening the plate back up, be met with what would be the pearl if the paper plate was a clam. After dinner a few students arrived with speakers blasting ABBA and Michael Jackson which we then danced to all night.

It was nice having a day like this. On Gunilla it is so easy for every day to become a misty cloud of memories just bundled together. Having a really memorable thing like this happen was really refreshing.

However, today is also a sad day. For about a month now 55 people have been trapped on this boat together and now one of our most favorite members on this journey is leaving us. The saddest thing is that once this blog has been written that very person will be sitting on a plane home unable to proofread this text about one of the most wholesome people that I along with the rest of the crew has ever met.

Roses are red and violets are blue. Daniel, you are irreplacable and we all love you.

• Malvin