A normal day on the Atlantic

My day started at 3:30 AM. I woke up and got ready for my watch. The watch started with us dowsing two sails: the main topsail and the outer sail. Then after that me and two of my mates went into the shark net and furled the outer sail. Two people went up to the top sail and furled it.

When everyone was done with their thing the whole watch climbed up to the main sail to practice furling. When we did it the first time it looked like complete and utter rubbish. But when our watch leader helped us with the star board side, it looked a lot better and were about ten times easier as well. The annoying thing with this was that two minutes later we were unfurling the sail to get ready to set it again. I climbed out on the port side and unfurled that. Then when I was on my way down our watch leader told me to climb up again and help the buntlines down. They are a bit slow sometimes, so they need some help.

During the afternoon watch my watch mates were knocking rust(?), painting and stuff like that. They practiced furling of the main sail again. The first time they did it, it took 50 minutes, the second time it took 40 minutes and the third time it took half an hour. I was “backis” during the afternoon and in the “byssa” we were washing up dishes that were left from the other watch, when the medical/secondary chef came in half panicked telling us she had to go and take care of someone that was hurt. The person who after looks so that everything is in order, Rondman as we call it, had fell down the stairs to the freezer and had gotten hurt pretty badly. But she’s okay now. So don’t worry, be happy.

Mathilda G