Öckerö gymnasium

Clouds painted pink

A day filled with a lot of learning and things to see, but also a lot of cozy and quality time with each other. The end of our time here at Gunilla is near, but all of us are in a great mood. Even though we´re just motor sailing, we are still learning new things and experiencing great things.

This is our third day at sea from Ponta Delgada on our way to Lisbon and we started the day on top. My cabin neighbors had some great music on to hype us up before our watch, which increased the good mood. Unfortunately for us though we have a lot of contrary wind that has made it quite hard to sail and we have had to go by motor. But today when I started my watch, all the staysails where up and we are now motor sailing which is quite a nice change. Because the headsails were set, we started our watch by seeing how much time it took for one person in our watch to set the inner jib. It has become a competition here on the boat between the watches to see which person in which watch will end up with the shortest time. Starboard have had the shortest time for a while where one of the guys in the watch only took 26 seconds to set the sail, but today Arvid in my watch scratched that record to only 22 seconds. Quite impressive if you ask me. But our second officer did it in only 19 seconds!

After setting and lashing the inner jib repeatedly, our warmup was done. After that our watch leader taught us how to whip and splice. Whipping is when you, by explaining it simple, tie a thread in the end of a rope so the end doesn’t split. Splicing is almost the complete opposite, because you start by opening the end of a rope and untying it and then braid it into itself to make a loop at the end. These two things we use together to tie different kinds of things that is needed in the mast, for example the secure lines in the second plateau that we went up to redo. After we had practiced for a while on these two things, we all went up to the second plateau to redo the old rope that secured the secure lines with new rope. It was quite fun and cozy to be there with the whole watch.

Before we knew it our watch was over, and time to go down and do some studies. After clas we looked at Astrid Lindgren’s biography movie. Everybody where dead silent when you walked in. It was a very suitable lesson if you ask me. In the middle of it all though somebody came in and yelled “the sunset is so beautiful, you have to come see!”, which is something you just can´t get used to. Obviously, I went up on deck and watched the beautiful sunset. The whole sky was on fire and the clouds were painted in pink which was a nice contrast to the blue ocean that flowed beneath us. A great day and a great sight if you ask me.

Ester Fagerström, portside

Publicerad:

Öckerö seglande gymnasieskola
Björnhuvudsvägen 45
475 31 Öckerö

Telefon: 031-97 62 00
e-post: kommun@ockero.se