Did the journey change us and influence our mindset?

Date: 16.04.2024
Nautical position: 44°39‘. 5 N 019°57‘.9 W
Geographical position: North Atlantic
Etmal: 95 nm
Total: 11693 nm
Ship: Pelican of London

To directly answer the question, you can say that in general the journey definitely did something with us. I guess that’s also one of the reasons why, maybe 1-2 years ago, every one of us decided to do these 6 challenging and intense months – to grow personally and to gain new experiences. But how did we change?

Of course, this is a very individual question and everybody’s answer would be different, but all in all I would say we got more confident, more open with other people and learned to really appreciate things like privacy, eating what you want and when you want, sleeping without getting woken up, and also I‘m sure a dishwasher will be very appreciated when we’re back home ;D

To not stay general and basic and to get more specific and individual, I asked some people some questions about the journey.

Questions

What is something that before the journey you hoped will happen, and it really did happen?

Leah: Finding friends for life.

Sophie: I hoped to learn a lot of good communication skills, which I think worked out.

Karl: Before the journey I hoped that the journey will be longer than six months… well, now we got one extra week which is very cool

Lou: I kind of hoped for something like the San Blas islands, even though it happened to exhilarate my expectations a lot

Something material you can’t live without on the ship/ at home:

Luise: On the ship definitely a head torch. At home there’s nothing specific, because there
are so many different things and possibilities.

Erik: On the ship it’s Musto clothes to not freeze on watches and the Learnbook. At home it’s headphones, because otherwise the way to school would be boring.

Marie: Here it’s crocs. My answer for at home is the same as Luise‘s.

Did the journey change your future plans?

Julius: Yes, now I kind of know what I want to do later.

Charlotte: Yes, because I have so many plans what I want to do directly after Ocean College, but my lifetime choices didn’t change that much.

Anna L.: It didn’t change my plans because also before the journey my plan was to go into the nautical direction. This journey just made my wish even stronger.

What are you the most thankful for on the ship/ at home?

Fred: At home definitely my family. On the ship I’m thankful for all the people here, they’ve become like my second family

David (2nd mate): On the ship it’s that everybody made it home safe and had a good journey.

Leah: I think it’s pretty the same here as at home. I’m just very thankful for the people at home and on the ship, who create home.

Is there a habit you got while living on the ship that you haven’t had before?

Anna B.: Doing a tea break with Leah at 2 am in the morning 🙂

Me: To put things immediately away after I used them so there will not be chaos.

How would you describe the journey in three words?

Julius: It is great!

David (2nd mate): Exciting, Fun, Exhilarating

Karo: I can’t answer that, it’s really hard to sum the journey up in three words

What are your ‚Vorsätze‘ when you are at home again?

Rosa: Doing things how I want.

Julius: Doing my hobbies and taking care of friendships, ignoring schoolwork

Teresa: I‘m planning to do a lot of sports and focus more on school. Also I want to visit a lot of people from our journey.

What are your thoughts about the journey being almost over?

Lena: I’m very very sad that the journey is ending because every day brings something new and exciting and kind of my second family lives here.

Samuel: I’m very sad because it was an amazing experience

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So you can see, there are quite a lot of changes the journey did to us. Smaller ones, and bigger ones (but some bigger ones might be too private to share here). Something that is very clear because of the answers: we found a second family here.

In general we’re all looking forward to our families and friends at home and to do things we missed that we couldn’t do her, but at the same time we’re sad to leave this six months and our second family behind.
But there are still 1,5 weeks to go that we will enjoy as good as we can!

About today

Today I had galley duty (my very last one), so I can’t tell a lot about what exactly was going on, but what I can say is that the Pelican is currently doing 3-4 knots, which is better than the last days, but still quite slow. And about my galley duty: It was a really good one, because it was quite successful and it was not that exhausting.

We made in total 6 cakes for dessert, but because of a big wave one cake unfortunately went on the ground and broke… that’s why five minutes later we were eating cake from the ground😆(of course with baking paper in between).

Oh, but there is one exciting thing to tell about: At about 10:45 in the morning, Tamsin made an announcement and she said that we will have some of an emergency in the next 30 minutes (just a training of course) and anything can happen.

We expected something like a ‚man over board‘ or a fire drill trailing, but 10 minutes later we suddenly heard someone screaming very loudly in the lower alleyway. Fred, our handover medic, hurried into the lower alleyway and the whole rescuing procedure was going on – the procedure of what you would do if this was a real emergency (Again: This was just a training, in real there did nothing bad happen!). Fred did a very good job!

P.S.: Hallo an alle! Es sind nur noch weniger als zwei Wochen bis wir ankommen und ich freue mich sehr auf euch! Liebe Grüße und see you soon, Greta🫶🏼