Movie time in the rain

Today there is only two days left until Christmas eve. It feels weird, we all should be at home with our families preparing gifts and sitting by the Christmas tree, but instead we are at sea on a big ship with our friends. It´s going to be exiting to celebrate Christmas onboard on Gunilla with my classmates, who has turned in to a big family.

04.00 am we were lined up on half deck, it was time for midships to go on watch. During the watch, we practiced for a "squall", a rain cloud with a lot of wind and water. If a squall comes we need to be quick in rigging the sails. You start to get a little tired of hauling and rigging and then unrigging and setting the sails. Then the sun rose, it's the best thing about the 4-8 shift that you get to see both sunrise and sunset. Then the clock had struck 08.00, when it was time to break eight glasses and hand over the watch to starboard.

Now it was time for breakfast, or just go right to bed and sleep until lunch. After lunch we have lessons in the big mess. Kiki told us that if we finish our assignments that has to be turned in once we get to Grenada we can watch a movie later. In the big mess it was hot and humid, the AC needed some small fixes which required it to be off while it was being fixed. We took the computers up on deck, it wasn't much cooler there but its windy. We read through each other's assignments and gave feedback and then submitted them.

After the lessons, it was time for us to go on watch again. My friend and I were “backisar”, helpers in the galley. And it was even hotter in the galley than in the big mess. We served dinner to the other watches. The dishwasher is still broken so the workforce sits and wash all the plates, glasses, knives and forks out on the deck. When it got dark, people started to gather on half deck. It was movie time, we rigged the projector so that the film was played on the monkey (a staysail). There we laid in each other's laps and looked up at the canvas where "Love actually" was playing. We had to take three breaks during the movie due to rain clouds. But it was still very cozy. After the film we went down to the big mess and sang and played the guitar. There are too many late nights in big mess, when you should be sleeping.

Lilja Alm, Midships