Hello my friends!

Today it is April 6, and it is a Sunday. My watch started the day by getting woken up at 3:30 AM, which meant that we had half an hour to get ready before our shift at 4AM. In the beginning of the sailing, I felt like I would die every time I woke up this time, but now I am starting to get used to it. We put on our red life vests which are not so practical but, in my opinion, quite cozy to wear. We were lucky this night, because our superior felt nice and let us lay on deck for a moment to rest. But the luck didn’t last very long and soon they made us work hard with all kinds of stuff. It was quite good for us though, because we became warm fast. We beamed a lot, which means that you pull some ropes until the yard turn either left or right. This we do to make the sail catch the wind in the right way.

When it was still dark outside, some of us also went up in the rig just to practice some climbing. In the beginning, I was a bit afraid of not seeing where I put my feet, but my night vision quickly became better. When I had climbed up to the top, there was no feeling of fear. I just thought it was marvelous being so high up from the ground. I could feel the strong wind blowing in my oilskins and the stars looked much closer than on the ground. Later through the shift, one of our superiors taught us how to recognize star signs like the Scorpion and Cassiopeia, which felt like cool knowledge.

After our shift we had eggs and bacon for breakfast, which we get every Sunday. That very tasteful meal made us all sleep tight until lunch. After lunch some of us went up on “Backen”, foredeck, where we tried to tan. Sadly, the wind was blowing quite hard, but no excuses, it would be embarrassing to come home as pale as we were when we left. Suddenly, an alarm signal screamed through the air, and we gathered on deck for a fire emergency practice. It all went well, and my watch could head to our bunks and sleep before our second shift, at 4 PM. During the shift, we hit a time record for setting two sails and then taking them down again, 9 minutes! Last time we tried the same thing, it took us 14 minutes, so that was progress.

Some people in the other watches tried to do fishing at the stern. They used a bunch of old egg free, lactose free and gluten free pancakes, which sadly not even the fish wanted.

As usual, we ended our shift by greeting midships (the watch of the period 8-12) with “god vakt”, and then we went to our beds for some well-deserved sleep. I hope everyone at home also sleeps well and that you are not missing us too much!

Alice Bohlin, Starboard