The night shifts

When I first told people that I was going to join a upper secondary school whos main profile was to sail when I had never even touched a boat in my life, they looked at me with shock in their eyes. When I first joined the school, I pictured being on Gunilla would mean endless sunsets, dolphins leaping alongside the bow, salty winds and exploring new cities with my best friends. Honestly, I was right, but sailing is so much more than that.

Everything here runs by routine, for example, I work in the shifts 12-4. That means working from 12 pm to 4 am and then from 12 am until 4 pm. Then, we also have 4 hours of classes before we finally can go to sleep. We often have movie nights, staying up chatting or raid the "students fridge". This means taking time out of your sleep schedule to get some free time and to hang out with the other shifts. One time, i didnt even get to fall asleep before I had to get up to my shift. Taking the first step out in the pitch black night, with waves crasshing over the deck, the only thing I wanted to do was to lay down, close my eyes and sleep for a week. But I must say that the shift was not that bad after all. There was not much left to do on the boat so our shift consisted mostly of playing games, learning kung-fu, having our shiftleaders read aloud, climbing the rigg for fun, or compress trash while getting to hear old stories from when our shiftleaders went to our school.

After all, waking up for a night shift was not that bad, it was actually pretty fun, the thing I think I will miss the most is that one game where the person who first saw dolphins or whales would win. Because of the dark, you might wonder how we could see anything in the water. My answer to that is that nature is magical. In the water, you could see small particals who whould light up if they were touched. So when the dolphins came, the water started to shimmer around them, and it looked unreal.

It might seem boring, and at first it was, but after a week whitout all the dopamine kicks from our phones and learning to enjoy time with yourself the night shift were actually something I could look forward to and is one of the things I will miss the most from the boat.