Rain, pie and sunshine

Today was a day as any other at sea. The thing with the watch between four and eight is that you really lose sence of when one day ends and the next begins, it's a pretty weird feeling. Today was the seventh day of the eight we have to Lisbon, but to me it feels like an eternity since we left France.

The day started at 3:30am for me and my watch. Tired as ever we got up, in slightly less clothing than usual since we're getting closer to warmth, with the stars bright above we started our four hours. At the watch switch we got told that, since we were sailing, we were heading in the wrong direction because of the wind. In order to get to Lisbon on time, we needed to take down all of the sails and go for machine. Those hours were very eventful, we didn't sit on our butts at all, always climbing up and down in the rig. I can't even keep track of how many sails we got down and tied up, but there were a lot. The watch went from fun but challenging to worse, as if it wasn't enough with tired minds and aching limbs, the rain started pouring down on us midway through. Let's just say that we were very glad, and soaking, when it was time for the next watch switch at eight am. The best thing with the 4-8 watch is that, after the morning watch, we all eat breakfast together. Tea and coffee warming our cold hands while our clothes were downstairs, drying.

We were all very tired after the tough, but fun watch, therefor we mostly slept until lunch and watched some movies since it's sunday, which means no lessons. To our snack at three pm we got the luxury of eating raspberry pie, since it was a students birthday she got to choose what to have for the snack.

During the evening watch we didn't have that much to do, the wind was still coming in straight ahead, so sailing was a no go. The sun did make an apperance though, a full turn from this morning when the rain fell down in showers over us. We mostly messed around and practiced some practical stuff like how to best handle sails and so on. When we got off again at eight in the evening, most of us went to bed more or less instantly.

To finish this blog I just wanted to congratulate my dear friend, Sandra, who turned 17 today. I hope her day was amazing.

All the love,

Liza, Starboard