Monday 17/3 - right?

The days at sea pass by in an extremely high speed. I find it really difficult to separate yesterday from today and Sathurday from Thursday. They all pass by, like the waves at the water surface and the wind in the sails. When you are 700 nautical miles from nearest land you don’t see much around you but water. Or that was at least what I thought before we left Saint Martin thirteen days ago. But I was wrong! During these almost two weeks we have been surrounded by a lightning storm, seen wales and a moon eclipse.

On today’s watch I was lookout. Normally that includes: standing on foredeck singing every song you know a tiny bit of lyrics to, without seeing anything but water on the horizon. But today, I had a mission, the watch before us had seen a couple of fishing buoys. For those who don’t know, you don’t want to get them in your propeller. I wasn’t going to miss a single buoy and I kept my focus, until I saw something on the water surface. This time it wasn’t only a wave passing by, it was a purple, see-through-ish something with tentacles. Euw, yuck! It was a Portuguese military man (a type of manet). AKA, one of the world’s most poisons animals. It wasn’t only one, they kept coming one after another. I couldn’t stop looking for the next manet, it was almost like a game.

Suddenly, I remembered my assignment, I had forgotten the important mission. How could I? I looked over my shoulder and there it was, ten waves away, the fishing buoy. But I was lucky, our course wasn’t towards it. Quickly I reported the buoy and then went back to keeping a proper lookout. This time looking out for buoys, not manets.

After this day I can add ”seen one of the world’s most poisonous animals” on my cool-things-I’ve- seen-at-the-Atlantic-Ocean-list! To rap things up, who knows if the things I’ve told you about actually happened the 17th of March? Last but not least, who cares?

Rebecca Borg, Portside