Leaving St. Martin

Today, we leave St. Martin. Volunteers from every watch work together as we pull up the anchor and prepare to ”fall astern”, bracing the sails of the foremast to catch the wind from the front of the ship, sort of sailing backwards to push the ship around.

We do this because we have to turn before setting all sails on our voyage towards the Dominican Republic, and turn far enough to get past a bluff that obscures our actual goal, the verdant waters the caribbean Atlantic. Unexpectedly, though, the wind turns and we have to quickly change from portside to starboard tack. But either way, it all works out well. We get past the bluff that was previously right behind us, and hit the ocean with a good pace. We hold 7-8 knots for a good while, before the wind slowly decreases in power. I leave the deck, as I am not on watch, but return some two hours later. This watch, I do the duties of a ”rondman” (A proper english synonym is yet to be found). I check the machine room for irregularities, I wash the ship’s laundry, I make sure the freezer and refrigerators are as messed up as usual, and not more. I do all of this quite quickly, as these are easy tasks that require little thinking for anyone who is familiar with them.

Then, I hit the jackpot.

During our stay in St. Martin, we have managed to gather twelve bags of moldy, compostable trash in the freezer room. And I get to cut them up and throw their innards into the turquoise below. After that is done, I put them in hot water to melt the trash from the creases of the bag, and spray it out with one of the deck hoses. This takes me approximately 90 minutes. I slowly become agitated, not because it is disgusting, the garbage is frozen and odorless, but because it is terribly inelegant work. To hose the bags clean, I have to put my arms over the rail and sort of guess where the bag is, while it janks around in the wind with a mist of slime and garbage zest trailing it. It is hard to clean them properly. Time consuming.

Flash forward; I have a dream where I meet Willem Dafoe, but he is paralysed from the neck down. He explains that he became ill because his father was addicted to energy drinks, and that he could have avoided the paralysis if he had played more football in his youth.

That was my day. I want to send love to my parents and my brothers and my mothers parents. Bye bye!

Edvin, Babord