Monday, 2 May

”Goodmorning, the weather is colder than yesterday and a bit cloudy, so I recommend you to wear longer pants and maybe a hoodie or some sort of long-sleeved shirt. For breakfast we are going to have porridge, bread and flakes with milk or yogurt.”

This was how I woke up the second day of May 2022. It was a good night of sleep but now we need to get our ass up and learn new things about the boat and routines. So I put my clothes on and then went to breakfast, 45 minutes later we had the regular morning lineup on deck. The Swedish and Portuguese flags were hoisted and then we got all the information for the day.

Today was a good day, I could feel it. It was the last day of the familiarization and the first guard day for my group, ”midskepps.” Yesterday our group of 14 got separated into two groups of seven, which is the group you do the familiarization in. We did four different tasks yesterday and today we had two. So after the meeting we went to the first task, where we learned how to walk around. This means that you are going to walk around the boat and its different rooms to check values of pressure, temperature and if you can see any signs of fire. This is something you have to do on your guard shifts.

So I went to check the schedule to see what role I had for the day, and today I was going to work in ”byssan” - the kitchen. This means that I need to wash all the dishes, prepare fika and prepare breakfast for tomorrow morning. But before all this we had one task/lesson to do. We were going to cover and uncover the sails. We need to learn this before we go out to the sea. When this ”lesson” was over, I went back to ”byssan” to set the table for dinner. Today the dinner was reindeer chaff with noodle wok. It was very good but I needed to eat fast so I could wash all the dishes that everyone had when they finished the food. So I couldn´t enjoy the food as much as the others, I also had to clean the whole kitchen so everything looks nice for tomorrow morning and the next group of guards. After two hours of effective work in the kitchen everything was cleaned and the breakfast was prepared for the next day.

Right now I'm laying in my bed to sleep and I´m looking forward to tomorrow, because we are going to a place where we can swim in hot springs, and after that we are going to eat food that has been made in the ground.

Vilgot