Next stop: IJmuiden

This day started out like any other day. We woke up at 7.00 am and ate breakfast at 7.15.When our watch begun, everything was as ordinary. No sails were sat and with a speed of a couple of knots if we were lucky.

Suddenly we got order to turn around. At fist, I didn't think about what this meant. I just did what i was told. When we had braced around and now headed towards the opposite direction of Öckerö, captain came out to speak to us. He told us that due to the strong head-wind we had burnt more diesel than calculated. If we kept on going we would risk running out of fuel in the middle of Skagerak. Therefore we were now heading towards the town of IJmuiden to bunker fuel and we would arrive already at 6 am the next morning.

When we got information about our new destination we also got to know that we most likely wouldn't make it to Öckerö at 9.30 am on the 14th. If we were lucky we would arrive in the evening on the 14th but we probably wouldn't arrive until the 15th. This were of course frustrating since everyone is tired and just wants to get home, but for me, the delay would result in me missing out on my sister's graduation.

Although this was annoying, there was nothing I could do. I just had to brush it of and make the best of a bad situation. Because even though we only would be at port for a couple of hours, we were allowed to leave the boat and see the town.

On our night watch we had much to do. During the day we had sailed for the first time in what felt like forever. But we were now heading towards a field of wind power plants. Because of this we now had to take down all the sails and change the course.

The rest of the watch went by without anything special going on. At 12.00 pm we finally went to bed knowing that we would wake up in another country once again.

Torkel Eilard, Midships