2300 Miles of Open Sea
29.11.2016 - 10.12.2016
In the beginning it didn’t feel as if we were out on the open ocean; we tend to sail out of sight of land. Everything was pretty normal, aside from the Christmas lighting in the wheelhouse on Sam’s birthday. You should have seen his face. A weird, almost flat wind made it possible for us to swim that evening, and watch a movie outside until it picked up again.
I’d heard a lot about the crossing: it was supposed to be long and perhaps mentally hard, and at the end all our fruit & veg would be rotten (and more). None of that was really true, for me at least. Yes, the pears were a bit unlucky, but we ate them before the point of no return. It was hardly longer than our passage to Tenerife, and I love to sail, so for me that wasn’t a problem either.
Especially because I really learnt stuff during those sixteen days. It started on the 1st of December, during morning watch, when we took all the sails down, wrapped the jibs and folded the topsails. Sam called us his top watch (he’s our watch leader), happy with the way everyone was simply busy the whole watch. On the morning of Sinterklaas I learned how to use a handy Billy, on Wednesday I fastened the sheet of the flying jib to the stay of the outer jib to prevent unnecessary wear and noticed a few things were out of order and fixed them. A watch later Sam handed me a drawing of a topsail, accompanied with a short, verbal explanation. “Good luck.” I explained it to the others who helped, and after some fiddling around we were ready to tighten the mainsail sheet. Sam helped at this stage, as raising a topsail often doesn’t go as planned. We did it, and moved on to the schooner, which went faster. From that moment on I knew how to raise a topsail.
A big event was Sinterklaas, a Dutch tradition that starts in November and ends on the 5th of December. Children get presents in their shoes and a gift bag at the end, but when nobody believes in him anymore, we make presents for each other, accompanied by a poem. You don’t know who has you till you’ve guessed at opening the “surprise”. Making these was rather stressful and chaotic, especially the evening before, because most of us had left it too late. On the day it was Sam who played the old saint in red and white robes, which was hilarious. Right after the celebrations we had to gybe, with me at the helm. Of course Sam guided me through it, otherwise it could have gone pretty wrong.
On the second Thursday of the crossing, the ship takeover was getting close, so it was decision time. We’d talked about it a lot, of course, who would be what? Now we had a day to write a letter, applying for a certain function. There were several that had to be filled, and after that we could make up our own ones, like board artist. I went for bosun, hoping to learn some more. After quite some motivational talks in the wheelhouse (none of the mates or bosuns had one), the final result was given on Saturday evening. Pim was captain, I the bosun of the 5-9 watch with Thibault as mate & watch leader.
Now all we had to do was wait till the 300 mile line.
