Sea routine

3 juli 2013

Een verslag van Victoria Vilhelmsson:
“”Good morning princess”, says Jimbo when he knocks at my cabin door. It is 07:14. “No rain, but a bit of sea spray”. He makes sure he gets response that I’m awake and then he goes on to wake up the rest of the watch. I get up on deck as soon as I’m ready. The sky is gray and starboard watch team is taking a reef out of the mizzen. Peter is hauling with the others on the throat halyard/clew. So he must have recovered from seasickness by now. I go below where David helps the chef Wouter to take out the breakfast. David says their watch 02:00 – 07:30 has been quiet and then Wouter rings the bell, loud and clear so anyone knows it is 07:30 and breakfast time. It’s a bit tricky to have breakfast when the ship rolls, you always need a hand for yourself and one hand for the ship. But people forget and get their cup of tea all over sometimes. I’m on port watch, fom 08:00 to 13:30, with Rosie, Hannah and the professional crew Jana, Jan and the captain Terry.  The last couple of days we have been sailing on starboard tack and not doing much sailhandling. The course is 155°, NE wind, 15°C, rough sea with 2-3 meters swell. Rosie comes on deck in his bright yellow sailjacket and every morning he writes how far we gone for the last 24 hours. We did 140 miles. We haven’t seen the ship ‘Europa’ for several days but we know they are about 30 to 40 NM away from us. All we see is the horizon. Jana and Hannah finish washing up after breakfast and we set sail together, the outer jib. We also take out a reef from the schooner. The rest of the watch we hang around on the quarter deck and take turns steering. We help Jana and Jan a bit with cleaning and maintenance too. Captain Terry promised we would look at some celestial navigation and do a noon observation of the sun with a sextant. But it is too cloudy today. 13:30 is lunchtime. We all eat together exept 3-4 professional crew who keep the ship going safe. The food is great and the long table is always set up nice. Three-course dinners and no rush, even if we must be on watch 30 min later. Starboard watch have time off during the day. To get some rest, shower, read a book or watch a movie.  During our night watch we usually make a bet at what time the moon will rise. But it rises later and later every night and last night we missed it because it got up at 2:00 when we just finished. Our watch hours are 08:00 – 14:00 and 20:00 – 02:00. During the night watch the last hour always drags. But it is soo nice to go to bed. The sea rocks you to sleep and you can hear the ocean roar outside when you’re in the nice warm bunk. Trusting port watch to look after the ship in the late night and early morning hours. Fair winds and following seas.”