Just another regular day 

Today was just another regular day in the lovely life onboard T/S Gunilla. I woke up at 11pm, still quite tired because I had been thrown from side to side in my bed. The sea has gotten a bit tougher the past few days and the lack of a good night’s sleep is present.

The lunch was absolutely delicious, fish soup with clams. During my 12-4 workshift we got to sand ”Peket”, which is the pole sticking out at the very front of the boat. For three hours we sat there in the net using sandpaper to sand away old paint. It was a monotone but pleasant task. I had the sun shining on me from my right and the calming sound of the waves on my left. Although, at the end of the shift it felt like my arm was going to fall off.

Me and my co-travelers have found that the days all blend together in a blur here at sea. You sleep. You work. You study. Repeat. Which is tough but also wonderful. You don’t have a lot of time to think, so you just kind of... exist.

Later, or in the middle of the night actually, we got ready for our next workshift. The nightwatch was very nice as well. We did our usual ”Tampsafari”, practising all the ropes on the entire ship. Then, after the fika, we watched an old movie using a projector and a sail. It was a black and white movie about a big ship, much bigger than Gunilla, that sailed all the way from europe to Chile and back. So we all cuddled up on deck and felt the honor of experiencing something similar to what the movie portrayed. In the modern world, you don’t have to sail a boat to get across the globe, but we do it anyway. Sailing like we do is preserving something old that mankind has been doing for thousands of years. We could have just flown from Málaga to Miami in half a day. But you wouldn’t remember a planeride for the rest of your life. I think that everyone who has sailed with Gunilla can agree that it is an absolutely unforgettable experience.

• Dorothea Schwarzmayr