Banana day

Our day started at 12 am with our friend Melker waking us up for our night shift. The first two and a half hours went well, we got great fika at 1:30 am. After that everything went bananas, up until then we had been playing some games and walked in the rigg but now it all went downhill. The rudder and the steering broke, and wouldn’t respond when we spun the rudder. The hydraulic oil started overflowing as well since there was a lot of air stuck in the machinery. Since the rudder went bananas we had to put up the emergency steering, and all of a sudden we had to be eight people just to commandeer the ship.

At 4 am we left the problems to the starboard watch and went to bed instead. After our good nights sleep we woke up to the yummy lunch chicken tikka masala and the bad news that the rudder still wasn’t fixed. Apparently we had also changed our heading about 180 degrees back towards Öckerö again. You might think that all those bad news brought down our mood, but we managed to stay positive anyways! For the whole watch we took turns spinning the rudder trying to fix it and let the air out from the machinery while the others sat and played games and having fun. Today it’s also Olle’s birthday and for the 3 pm fika he had wished for something sweet, so we got surprised with some kladdkaka and bananas. That was good enough of a motivation to go out on deck and keep on fixing with the rudder. When there was only ten minutes left of our watch there was a big wave that got us all drenched right before we could go inside. Once again we left our rudder problem to the starboard watch and went inside to have some school work done instead. When we are writing this we have just finished eating a delicious dinner and are planning to have a cozy night and maybe play some cards.

See you later alligator

- Marit and Ylva