A rainy day at port in Lissabon

Today I was woken up for breakfast at 7 am. I ate a quick sandwich before getting ready for our watch that started at 8 am.

There really wasn’t much work that needed to be done on board so instead of just sitting around doing nothing, our watch leader decided it was a good idea to climb up into the rig and practice lashing the sails. As we started climbing the weather was looking great, the sun was shining as we started lashing, but about halfway through our practice the rain started poring down. The raindrops were huge and my face stung as they hit me. We asked our watch leader if we could take a break and keep going again later when the weather cleared up, but he said no and we where stuck in the rig for about half an hour in that horrible weather.

When we finally got down again we were all soaking wet and had to put all of our clothes in the dryer. Yet, the most frustrating thing about this has to be the fact that the second after we’d changed clothes and walked back up on deck, the sun was shining again and there wasn’t a sign in the sky of any rain.

After this I was exhausted and couldn’t wait to take a nap, but before I could do that we had to finish the thorough cleaning. I had to clean the toilets which was disgusting.

It was a great relief when this watch was finally over around 4 pm.

Elsa Daniels