A day of ship guarding

It’s 07.00 a.m. as I slowly wake up in my small cabin. Having just awoken, I put my clothes on
and slowly make my way to the big mess to eat breakfast.

Today my work team is on watch aboard the boat, and I am assigned the role of ship guard, an extremely long-winded role on the boat for someone as restless as myself. At the breakfast table I sit and stare down at my plate of yogurt and cereal mentally preparing for a long day of sitting still.

After the line-up on the main deck I walk my way up to the gangway and make myself comfortable on the chair for a long day. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the work of a ship guard, it’s basically when you sit by the gangway making sure that no one walks abroad who shouldn’t be aboard. Once an hour you are also supposed to go a lap around the boat called `rond´, on the rond you check that everything looks good, making sure nothing is on fire, that all the values in the engine room are okay and so on. Normally you just sit by the gangway when not on ´rond´, maybe read a book or talk to the other ship guard, but today there were several small tasks to do. I start off with varnishing the block to the halyard for the staysail `apan`. When revarnishing a block, the old varnish is scraped off, the block is sanded, oiled and finished with varnish. While the oil and varnish dries.

I started to work on a little project that our watch-leader started. It's a mini version of Gunillas´ rig made for the first years so that they can learn from it and practice on it. The masts and sails are already done so I start to sew small tamps on the sails which would represent the running rigging. Now, a few hours later, I’m done with the mini-Gunilla, the watch is over soon and it's almost time for some free-time. So I end the watch with a last rond. When the rond is over, Annie comes to take over the ship guarding and I go down to the big mess to eat some dinner. When I get down to the big mess, I see that it's pasta for dinner and let me tell you that pasta is like the icing on the cake after such a good day. With high expectations I put a big forkful of pasta in my mouth, and I can tell you, I'm not disappointed. Our chef Johannes has done it again, a dinner so delicious that I could scream out of happiness. After dinner I take a shower and hang out with my friends for a bit before I go to sleep.

And I'll tell you, tonight I will sleep like a log. I’m so tired that I could sleep standing up.
I end the day with my nightly routine. Brushing my teeth to the sound of `Tro på livet´ by Håkan Hellström, then putting my pajamas called `multisexi´ on and at last reading a book until I fall asleep.

Thank you Gunilla for another good day aboard! Love Maja
// Maja, Midships watch