Öckerö gymnasium

ET in the rig

Since the whole class (except for the new students) missed winter 2019 due to our last trip, there´s been a common theme of longing for the darker months of winter and autumn onboard. I find myself from time to time daydreaming away to those cozy days of snuggling up in the sofa with a good movie or book and a cup of hot cocoa as the wind howles outside. Thus when all four hours of our morning guard where dominated by a layer of white mist and overall autumy feel, I found it to be really very cozy.

Quite a few of my classmates would probably disagree and say that the weather was more just wet and cold than cozy. To be honest, I´d have to say that their opinion weighs a little heavier than mine in this specific situation. This being simply because I was roundman, which meant that I wasn´t quite a part of the normal workforce. Instead I had respnsibility for checking that everything was alright onboard. Such as making sure nothing is on fire and what not. This is done by walking about the whole boat once every hour. Thus meaning that I wasn´t outside nearly as much as the general taskforce. Which might be why I wasn´t too bothered by the brisk, cold air that the mist brought with it. Nevertheless, as formentioned, I found the weather to be very cozy and my point with this whole ramble was to declare that I found todays morning watch very enjoyable.

Almost as enjoyable as I found the night watch to be, only almost though. Because two and a half hours of our night watch went to watching a movie, making it quite hard for any other watch to beat it. The movie we watched is called Master and Commander and it takes place almost entirely on a sailboat. Making it a cool movie to watch on a sailboat. For instance when the boat on the movie started rolling a lot, it was as if I was watching a 4D movie since I too could feel the rolling of a boat.

I now realise that I´ve made it sound as if though we didn´t work at all during our night watch but I promise that I did work at least a little. After the movie was done I went up into the rig to splice. Splicing is a technique used to merge two ropes with eachother, or create a loop in a rope (see picture). I enjoy splicing although it is a little tricky sometimes. It´s especially tricky up in the rig when it´s pitch black outside. Luckily I got to use a head lamp so I could see what I was doing. Which in itself was a fun experience because I had never used a headlamp in the rig before. Furthermore the lamp glowed red so my classmates down on deck said it looked like ET was climbing in the rig since all they could see was a red light moving around up there.

That´s all for now, over and out.

Lina Exerman

Publicerad:

Öckerö seglande gymnasieskola
Björnhuvudsvägen 45
475 31 Öckerö

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