Weekly meetings and carrot cake

The watch learned to stow sails more efficiently while I watched from deck, waiting impatiently for the carrot cake people had been whispering about. We have the weekly meeting on quarter deck and a lucky few get candy as a reward for their guessing skills.

For Portside the day began at 03.30 and I was post. We all stayed in bed ten minutes after we were woken up, so we changed in a hurry then waddled out in the darkness on deck. The moon was out, so we had some light, but it’s still hard to see.

The watch practiced stowing sails on the “bram”. I watched from deck, keeping an eye on the people in the rigging. I can hear the faint sound of them talking, but I can’t make out what their saying.

The hours creep by slowly in the night, especially when you’re on post, nothing really happens and you don’t do much.

Then, at 05.00 AM the long awaited fika finally arrived; carrot cake. When someone finally came and relieved me from my duty so I could go have some I was blinded by the bright light of inside. My hair was standing on end from the wind and my cheeks were rosy, but the smell of cake was an amazing greeting.

I got a slice that had been drowned in frosting so sweet in almost curled on the tongue. But I ate it all anyways.

When the watch was over, we hurried inside to get bacon and egg for breakfast, like every Sunday. The we had the rest of the day, until 16.00, to do whatever we wanted, because Sundays are also lessons free. We spent the day sleeping and doing absolutely nothing remotely exiting, just resting.

At 15.40 we had our weekly meeting, so everybody gathered on quarterdeck, cramped together basically siting on top of each other. The meeting was mostly uneventful, they announced the winners of a little competition and then they sent us of in our individual watches to discuss things we’d like our representatives to take to Anne-Li and Bo, our captain.

Since we were now on watch we had to stay on quarterdeck so that at least two of the posts could be a part of the discussion. No one had much to say.

The watch started for real and me and Hjördis took on the job of sanding blocks. We spent about an hour just talking about books. Then it was time for fika again. Nothing fancy this time, just sandwiches, but it was good anyways.

When we got back out Stine, our watch leader, told us it was time for lessons. We’ve had lessons before, but this time it was our turn to hold them. Because we now had a mission; to make Ema (one half of the film team) the best sailor known to mankind. I don’t know how well that went, because I think we confused ourselves more than we thought her, but she seemed happy none the less.

After watch it was time to go to bed, so I’d have enough energy to do it all again at 03.30 the next day.

Lovisa Karlsson, Portside