A day of undoing knots

The day started the same as it has for the past 3 days. We have left Ponta Delgada and are headed to Plymouth. This means that we have guard for 4 hours twice a day. My guard (Starboard) has guard from 4-8 during both daytime and nighttime. The alarm rings at 03:25. Five minutes later someone comes in to wake you up. The worst part of waking up is the feeling when they turn the lights on and you know that you can’t sleep more because your shift is about to start in 25 minutes.

Today I was standing post, which means that I steered the boat, stood lifebuoy guard and kept an eye out for objects floating in the ocean. When you stand post you stay at the same place for 30 minutes doing your task and then you switch place and get a new task to execute for another 30 minutes. At every half hour we ”strike glass” which means we strike a bell. After one half-hour we strike one glass and after an hour we strike two glasses.

Standing post also means that you are going to be standing still very much. Standing still on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean also means a lot of wind and cold. That is why I put on as much clothes as possible a hat and gloves. When it’s dark out standing post isn’t the most fun thing to do. During daytime you can watch dolphins and look at the waves but during the night everything is dark. You can see a few shadows of people walking on deck and the light parts of the waves.

Today the wind started to act up. The waves got bigger and peoples shoes got wetter. Our shift ended at 08:00, which meant it was time for breakfast. After breakfast, as usual, I took a nap until lunch. This nap is one of the best parts of my day. When lunch was over it was time for some school work. We had two lessons where we had time to work on our studies that are due when we arrive in Plymouth.

At 16:00 we had our second shift of the day. During this shift I was going to be ”workingguard” which means that you do the work that has to be done, like setting sail, cleaning and more. This is one of myn favorite guards to have because we almost always have something to do. Today we set the second highest sail. There were a lot of troubles with setting this sail since some of the ropes were tangled. It took almost 2 hours before we untangled the problem. When we figured out what had to be done we could finally set the sail. When we had set the sail our work was almost done. During the rest of the shift we learned to tie different knots. This was very fun since I learned so many new knots that can be used for many purposes. Doing knots might not seem fun at first but once you get into it you will want to learn more. Our shift ended at 20:00. And now we are all going to go to bed to get our beauty sleep.

Emilia Rantanen, Na2124