At sea

Day two at sea, we left Havanna yesterday morning. Right now our watch has the 8-12 time. Which means we are working from 8am to noon, are free until next
watch, and work again at 8pm to midnight.

I like the time 8-12, you are able to keep some sort of normal sleeping schedule and it’s nice to work those hours. One thing that is not equally popular is that every night at 9pm we go down stairs and clean the interior and toilets. My favourite time to have watch is 4-8, you work from 4am to 8 am in the morning and then 4 pm to 8 pm in the afternoon.

In the morning you see the sunrise and in the evening you get to see the sunset,
which means that it’s never a whole watch in the dark. One thing that happens when you haven’t been out at sea for a while is that you forget what it’s like. It’s a very unique thing, there is not really something to compare it with. You completly get disconnected from the outer world and all you think about is three things.

1. Your next watch
2. When you get the chance to sleep again
3. When is the next time you get food

It’s like we become simple creatures with basic needs, eat, sleep, work.
Sometimes it’s hard, you can feel in your body that you work 8 hours a day. But I
think it’s good for the body to work, to get exercise everyday, to be really tired
when it’s time to sleep beacuse we have worked, it’s a good feeling. If anyone has
trouble falling asleep, take a trip with Gunilla, you will learn to fall asleep anywhere at any time of the day. It’s a talent.

We often talk about how lucky we are to be able to do this trip as a part of our
highschool education, and that everyone else in our age are sitting at home, in
cold Sweden, having regular lessons, just learning about the things we get to
experience in real life. And that is wonderful. But yesterday at our ten o’clock
“fika” we were all tired, we had just finished clening and the toilets were flooded
and people were seasick. There was a lot of waves so everything fell of the tables
and everything became ironic. And someone said “we never talk about that this
also is a part of our highschool education”. So if there is anyone at home feeling
jealous of this trip, think about that and it might feel slightly better.

Anna, Starboard