The weather having mood swings

Today is the 2nd of August, and we are finally on our way to Iceland. After two days of familiarisation with the (not so) beautiful view of Öckerö yard, we finally left the quay and sailed towards new adventures. Actually, let me be honest, we didn't sail that much.

We've had a stubborn head-wind since we left Öckerö, forcing us to start our trip by motor. We did unfurl a few sails this morning, only to furl them again two minutes later. Our captain told us it was the most exciting part of our watch, and I have to agree. We thought that we had recieved a preview of the upcoming watches, calm and simple, but we could not have been more wrong.

When we woke up later that night to carry through our night watch, it took a whole lot of effort to even get up on deck. The boat was in motion, to say the least. After being thrown back and forth in the corridor, and having a drawer tossed through our cabin, we made it outside with the foreboding that there was quite a lot of wind. Correct, the wind was strong and untamable. Thus, I hurried up on maindeck to try and avoid being thrown overboard and sat down beside my poor friends who were drenched and cold. The waves were huge, but I thought that since maindeck is situated several meters over the water, I would stay safe from getting wet. Jokes on me, I sat there for two minutes before I was drenched as well. The funny thing is that we saw the wave, looked at each other, and said “that’s an immense wave”. After that, we just waited for a few seconds without anything happening and thought “well, was that it, did we dodge it?”. But just when I relaxed and turned to my friends again to joke about the how no weather dared to perturb our peace, I felt several liters of water thrown right over my head. I think it was the ocean trying to calm my hubris.

However, while I'm writing this blog I can feel the waves decreasing in height and I can see the clouds split up and let through the sunlight. We'll make it, we always do.

Caroline Jendeby, NAS 2023, Midship