Good seamenship

High waves lead to a swinging boat which leads to seasickness for most of us. Seasickness is different depending on the person and if you have slept, eaten and drunken enough. Some of us are totally fine and doesn’t get affected at all in the same time as some of us barely can stand up during the watch.

When you’re out at sea like we are now, the most important thing on the boat is good seamenship, here we call it ”gott sjömanskap”. Good seamenship means that you’re always five minutes early, think about other’s wellbeing before yours and that you do things for the team and not for yourself. We all are on this boat because we wanted to, so now we all have to do our best to make it a good time for everyone, not only for yourself. In many situations some people have to do something scary or gross, like take down a sail or clean something up.

The captain of the boat told us that our group got the worst weather that he has seen since he started working here on the Mediterranean. He said that the Mediterranean never have been so windy, rainy and cloudy with such big waves. Every sealeg until now we have sailed through 20 m/s.

But anyway, high waves lead to a swinging boat which leads to seasickness for most of us. Seasickness is different depending on the person and if you have slept, eaten and drunken enough. Some of us are totally fine and doesn’t get affected at all in the same time as some of us barely can stand up during the watch. When people get seasick the schedule can’t be followed since there are some tasks like work in the kitchen or to be lookout that’s impossible to do when you’re seasick. In the kitchen it’s hot, moisture, swinging and smells a lot, which is like the worst place possible to be at when you’re seasick. Some of us are not seasick though, so those who doesn’t get as affected by the swingings have to be more responsible and work harder. If everybody doesn’t try their best we won’t get any food or make the boat a safe place to be on. Sometimes it’s hard to see if someone is seasick or if they’re just lazy with bad seamenship. All you can do is to hope that everyone has empathy enough to do their best. Good seamenship is the most important thing on a boat.