An intense Sunday on T/S Gunilla

Working overtime isn’t always so bad. It can also lead to new experiences and cool opportunities.

The day began early at 03:30 my watch got woken up. We were told the weather wasn’t so bad and there was a bit of wind. I was so tired and frozen but there was no choice to stay it bed. I got dressed and had to wear 3 layers of clothes as usual to not freeze to death during the watch. I was supposed to be part of the working crew so I was hoping we were doing some fun work to get warm and “wake up”.

The watch began 4 o’clock with a walk in the rigg. We call it “rigg promenad”. Which means we climb around in the rigg just to get used to climb in the darkness. It wasn’t so dark though because of the full moon. We didn’t do so much after that or I just can’t remember. We took out the broken sail which had been repaired by a crew member earlier that day. We were supposed to roll it together and put it in another place. Even though we were like 10 people it was still heavy. We took out the sail then we didn’t have any more time because it was time for a very important meal. Fika pause. The fika today tased amazing we were served “fattiga riddare”. Those 15 minutes of fika feels more like 5 minutes but they are still important. After it was time to roll together the sail and lift it to basically the other side of the boat and then down a stair. Nothing more exciting happened during the watch really. The only thigh everyone was thinking of was breakfast. And the greatest things about Sundays on Gunilla is the breakfast. We are always server eggs and bacon. Another great thing about on Gunilla is there is no lessons on Sundays.

After breakfast almost everyone goes to catch some sleep and just rest. Around 11:40 we got woken up for lunch. And today we were served entrecôte, potatoes and some sauce so no one was complaining. After the lunch most people got back to sleep, resting, reading or watching movies. I decided to watch a movie instead I probably needed some more sleep but that’s a later problem.

Today was also an important day. We time traveled (almost). When the clock turned 14:00 it changed to 15:00. It’s something we had to adjust manually though. Also it was a meeting with everyone on the boat every single crew member assemble on deck to talk about things that’s going well and things that needs to be adjusted or just be addressed.

After the meeting was done it was time for our second watch at 16:00. We did a lot with the sails and changed stuff which is always fun. We had a lot of lessons about a thing that we were doing together with another watch later on. It meant that we had to work overtime though. At fort when we heard those words we got a little bit mad but when we heard what we were going to do our minds changed. We ate some chicken and rice for dinner and then went through everything once again giving out every position to each person so we knew who were doing what and where. We was supposed to do a “stagvändning”(I think). It’s hard to explain but least to say there is a lot that is happening at the same time. We kind of failed though but it’s okay it was our first time. Also it’s not often they do things like this on Gunilla so it was kind of worth it and a fun experience for everyone. After the watch I just ran to bed to finish my movie and went to sleep a bit to late…

Turid