And now we are sailing!

Finally the engines are turned off and the square- and staysails are doing all the work. At the beginning of the voyage only a view staysails were up and the engines were responsible for the most of the power. Let’s have a look at that time. On the first day, when we sailed out of the harbor, Jelte told us about some safety rules and things we should and shouldn’t do. Voyage information and that kind of stuff we did the day before. We checked in on Monday evening and were off at Tuesday morning.

You will never understand the feeling you have when you sail out of harbor unless you’ve seen it with your own eyes. The boats and the land will start to get smaller and smaller. Once we were informed about all the safety stuff, we had to get used to the rhythms. Our schedule of the day is way different then at home. We work with watches. Sometimes you are on watch at midnight and it’s hard to wake up, cause you’ll never get more sleep then seven hours straight. That is because we work with a system of 4 hours on, 8 off. When you’re up, you have to be at look out, helm (steering) or stand by for sail handling. The second day I did some maintenance and we saw the first dolphins playing around the ship. Not did we only saw dolphins, we saw some whales and a turtle as well.

Also we got a lecture about the names of the sails and ropes. We are for four days on board and we got lectures every day. Sometimes even more than one! But we’ve still a lot of trouble finding the right ropes. Then there is the food. It’s an important part of the voyage. I’m still wondering about how it’s possible that the people who are in a small kitchen are making such delicious meals day after day. Yesterday we finally put all the sails up. We were sailing after three days of motoring.

Pien & Daniel