Real sailing

Waking up is always difficult but try doing it after a 4 hour watch with another watch just around the corner. That is how it is to wake up on Gunilla. The ship is always in motion, constantly swaying from left to right and back again. If you sleep alongside the ship you get to roll across your bed and if you sleep across the ship your whole body moves
up and down with the ship. Both make it difficult to sleep.

When we were woken by the 4 to 8 watch at 7 am you could sense how we
were swaying more than usual. The second I took a step outside my cabin,
I could feel that today was going to be a special day. I could hear the
constant sound of rain clattering into the deck above me. It was the
first rain we had since we left Fort Lauderdale, Florida almost a week
ago.

I stumbled my way to the stairs trying not to fall or hit anything in
the hallway. Since it was raining and high waves, I put on boots,
waterproof gear and harness on top. At 8 am, when our 8 to 12 watch
begins, the rain had stopped but as we would later find out, it was only
on a short break. The waves were still high and reaching almost three
meters, easily splashing up onto the quarterdeck. On the maindeck the
waves were regularly splashing over the railing, filling the deck and
flowing across the it with the swaying of the ship. During the line-up a
wave splashed up over the watch standing on the other side of the ship.
Luckily they were all wearing waterproof gear as well. Unfortunately all
this water made the deck much more slippery.

Today I was a part of the workforce. The beginning of the watch went
smooth with just high waves and aggressive swaying. We mostly did
maintenance work such as painting pulleys with oil and working on ropes.
We also did a few sailing maneuvers when the wind changed and when we
changed course, it mostly consists of hauling different ropes which
becomes much harder when the whole deck is slippery. One rope was extra
difficult which gave the waves an opportunity to splash onto us when we
all were bunched together.

Even with the high waves and swaying it was fun and not too hard. It was
around half past 9 am when it all hit the fan and the sky opened up with
rain beginning to hail down on us. We now had water coming from under
us, the sides and from above, all at the same time. At the time we all
were hauling ropes to turn the main mast. Some of us did not even have
our rainjackets on. Since we obviously could not simply drop the ropes
and get it we had to endure the rain until we were done. The rain came
fast and disappeared almost just as quickly after 10 am. As we later
found out, we had just passed through the edge of a storm we had been
avoiding for a few days.

Some of us think this was the most fun watch yet with a lot of action
while others think it was miserable. What we can all agree on is that it
was not the usual watch where we sit on the deck doing
knots. This is real sailing.

Elias, Starboard