A Saturday at Sea

I was woken up by someone knocking unnecessarily hard on my door,
telling me I have a watch in 30 minutes and that it was sunny and pretty
warm outside.

The thing was that it was half past three in the middle of the night. I
was hit by a complete shock, thinking that I had slept through the night
shift last night or maybe that I had gone totally insane. When later
asking the person who woke us up if it really was sunny, it turns out
she meant that it wasn't raining. I wonder why people just can not learn
some basic vocabulary.

This watch I was post. Let me tell you something about being post: it
makes your dopamine levels reach below zero. Today I started out as the
helmsman. Every single time when I am steering Gunilla I always manage
to get up to ten degrees out of the said course. The few moments we were
actually heading in the right direction, the chief officer was
obliviously not looking!

After half an hour of steering it was time to change the post. This time
I was going to be the lifebuoy guard. If you do not know what that is,
it means that you should be ready to throw a lifebuoy in case someone
falls in the water. No one has ever fallen overboard and to be honest I
don't think anyone ever will (knock on wood), so everything you do is
just stand there.

30 minutes later you change post again, so I went to the front to be the
lookout. What you are supposed to do is to look out for something in the
ocean, a boat for example. An hour had passed since the watch started,
but it felt like it had been an eternity. A quarter later, after seeing
nothing but the ocean and stars, it was time for the best part of the
night watch, which is eating scones. They were the most delicious thing
I have ever eaten, probably because I was starving at that point. It
just sucked that I only had ten minutes to enjoy them.

After filling my stomach with scones this circle with the different
posts went on for almost three more hours. And after this totally
amazing watch I went back into my cozy bunk to get some rest before
lunch and three hours of schoolwork.

Signe Axelsson, Midship