Unforgettable

It’s the 18th of september, which means there’s only 20 days left of this unforgettable trip.

Whilst some parts of coming home will be nice, like for instant, not be isolated from the world that exists outside Gunilla. But mostly, I will miss everything about it. What seems like everyday life here on the boat is actually something most people won’t get the chance of experiencing. Because of this, I will not try to spice up the following story about day 33 here on Gunilla.

As every other day, except when we’re in harbour, the ones that are on watch before us wakes us up at 7 o’clock with breakfast. We get one hour to get ready and eat, then we have to be ready for watch. We were lucky enough to wake up to the first sunny day here on Biscay. Not only sunny but nice wind too, which made us have an average speed of 7 knots only by sails.

One of the first things that happened on watch was that we saw a bat that hid under the forecastle, but that was not the only animal we saw during our 8-12 watch. We spotted both dolphins and whales as well. The lifebuoy guard thought she saw a shark and got the whole watch to stare out over the ocean for about 5 minutes until we figured it only was a couple of dolphins. Our watch went by pretty quickly, there was some bracing and maintenance work but besides from that it was a still watch.

After watch, we had our lessons like usual. Me and my study group recorded a history podcast about the trip we did during our stay in France, to the beaches in Normandie. We had some traditional Swedish “kladdkaka” for our Swedish “fika”, or maybe afternoon tea if we still would be in the latest harbour, Portsmouth. We enjoyed our few free hours by sitting on the forecastle and discussing what to do in the next harbour, Lisbon, that we are hoping to be in on Saturday by lunch.

The most popular suggestions were bullfighting and surfing, sounds like a nice mixture. We had our night watch, 20:00 o’clock, and ended the day the best way possible. With cheesecake and homemade raspberry jam.

Hope you enjoyed my blog, until next time, be well.

Elin Rudolph, port watch.