RIG WORK AND MONTHLY MAINTENANCE

I was woken up at 11 o'clock in the morning by the "Rondman", the person who wakes all the people in the other watch up. She said that it was sunny and no wind with small waves, bad for sailing but good for maintenance and maintaining our ship and home in good shape.

So we went up to our small dining area to choose between lunch or breakfast (because our time to eat is in the middle of breakfast and lunch) and 11:45 I got out on main deck and felt the sun´s heat, so I thought that a pair of long pants was not ideal for this condition. On our watch take over we had four sails up, our under Mers sails and our jib stay sail and inner jib stay. This meant we had to set some sails because we did 1,6 knots towards the Netherlands, then our ETA (estimated time of arrival) would be in 8 days. So together with three others I climbed up to the over Mers sail on our mainmast to release the Seizings and unfurl the sail. Only three minutes later we had set two more sails. So then we got the command that we also should set our two Bram sails, so we did. And with some more speed gained we started with the maintenance work. Gabriel and I went up on our mainmast to put some omega grease on our wires from the top down. After the coffee break at 15:00 o clock we had 45 minutes to finish the wires and unfortunately we had no time to take care of the wires on our under Mers, because we ware in a hurry to get to the gathering for our free watch on main deck.

On our free watch we hade time for some lessons to finish our interviews and our math assignments, also start to prepare the interviews that will occur in Portsmouth. The first minutes of our free watch I spent in the shower after some greasy rig work. Thanks to the great weather we could even sit outside and work on our foredeck onboard. The dinner served this evening was hamburgers with French fries, and the coffee break served hot chocolate. And to end this blog I've made a little poem in a light headed matter about the life onboard a school ship.

Viggo Hinnerson Starboard watch

Day after day

Our journey continues

Sailing from dusk till dawn

Everyday, all day

Nothing to complain about

Come see us on our great boat

Everyone here is happy

No worries about staying afloat

Sometimes we get mad

Under deck we sometimes fight

Rage and fury, but always end up glad