”Why the f* do they want it in millimeters?”

2nd day at sea, on our way from Barcelona to the french island of Ajaccio. As per usual the winds on the ’Med’ are very unpredictable. It can blow from any direction and change at any second. At the moment, the wind is coming straight ahead of us, as a result of which, we can’t sail. Right now we’re doing 6 knots with the diesel engine, which I actually prefer. Diesel always wins over sails ;)

Today I’ve been the ’galley boy’ from 4am to 8am. We’ve just had a watch switch, which means that the 12-4 watch moves ahead to the 4-8 watch. Anyways, being a galley boy is a very stressful job. You’re basically the cooks little helpers who do all the dirty work. Washing dishes, cleaning the entire kitchen, serving the food and so fourth.

Students who studie the maritime program went around the ship to find out different information such as, weights of the anchors, length of fire hoses and engine power output. This information should then be filled into the book in which training records are kept. For some reason the book wanted us to fill in the diameter of each fire hose onboard in millimeters, however at first we thought that they wanted the total length in millimeters. This resulted with a funny remark from the captain - ”why the f* do they want it in millimeters?!”

There isn’t that much stuff going on when we’re at sea. Half of the things that we do at sea is not very interesting and most of it is not even worth mentioning. Today we’ve had two lessons. The first one started just after lunch and it was about the previous port, in this case Barcelona. We discussed what was good and things that could be improved when the next year of students do the trip. The second one is a free choice lesson, it’s exactly what it sounds like, you are free to choose what you want to work on. Well that’s all for today, now I’m going to make a glass of O’boy!

Joachim, midskepps