Öckerö gymnasium

Starboard reaching for the stars

Today, we made history. Today, we reached further away from ordinarity in pursuit of unlocking the true potential of ourselves and our ship. Today we reached for the stars.

The last day of Reykjavik, the first day of an eight-day journey across the north atlantic ocean. A day like this, as you might imagine, was full of emotions. Excitement and darring expectations spread as a plague as people had grown tired of staying at the same place for too long. We were also excited to try our new watch hours. As a starboarder, this was huge. We were saved from the tedious 8-12 watch, the watch responsible for cleaning the very regularly used toilets, as well as the rest of the boat's interior. Instead we were going to get the 12-4 watch, with hardly any cleaning duties at all. Nice.

As the watch came along, after we had familiarized ourselves a bit with our new watch leader Soraya, Me and my good friend Malvin received a very special task: To set the royal. If you are familiar with sailing slang, you know that the royal is the topmost sail. Waving its cloth more than 30 meters above the waves of the ocean, scraping the sky, reaching for the stars, and being a sail that is rarely seen out, it's no wonder why it’s been given the very prestigious name “Royal”. But still, how is setting a sail such a special occasion, you might ask. Well, when leaving Öckerö three weeks ago, we had no royals. They were stuffed away in the hull for whatever reason, and we embarked on our voyage two sails short. In Reykjavik however, one of them, the foremost, was put to place. The fact that we had now set it, felt very symbolic. It meant we had ventured further up the masts than ever before, to capture the absolute most wind we could. Additionally, since the royal is very sensitive to wind, and can only be up in the most top notch conditions, it also meant we had wonderous sailing ahead. To me, sailing with the royals is the pinnacle of sailing, and every second they are up, is a second where Gunilla feels more like a home than a boat.

Marcus von Elek, Starboard

Publicerad:

Öckerö seglande gymnasieskola
Björnhuvudsvägen 45
475 31 Öckerö

Telefon: 031-97 62 00
e-post: kommun@ockero.se