Not so flash Johnny News

Ship: Johnny
Date: 04. March 2025
Position: Harbour of St. George’s Island, Bermuda
Nautical position: 32°22,8‘N 064°40,5‘W
Total Distance: 9649 nm
Etmal: 0

Flash Johnny News

This time, we’ll do a quick rundown of recent events and generally things I’d like to mention or explain – an idea I had last time and really liked. We already have Johnny News as a vlog hosted by Maja and Daniela, so I’ll make a little written version.

Overview:

Bermuda
Steering competition update
Our Pathways
Cabin change
Beach cleanup
Bunk ratings 1.0
Plans
New letters for you!

Bermuda

Since the 1st of March, we have been in Bermuda, more precisely in the harbour of St. George’s Island, moored onto the Regina Maris. Bermuda is very nice; it looks a lot like you’re in England, which is because Bermuda was an overseas part of Britain.

The first few days, the weather was also very fitting – we had to take a raincoat everywhere. We all hoped for new sweets for the second Atlantic crossing, but sadly, Bermuda is really pricey, so most of us won’t be able to buy enough for the crossing.

Steering Competition Update

As mentioned in my last blog, Toni planned to steer for eight hours straight – no breaks allowed. And he succeeded, with a stopped steering time of eight hours and five minutes, beating Paul’s record of five hours.

Since then, a new participant joined the competition and set a new record of eight hours and ten minutes, which he achieved on the day we arrived in Bermuda. Fridolin originally wanted to steer even longer but was prohibited by our third mate, Tim, because we needed a more awake helmsman as we got closer to the shore.

Since his record was beaten, Toni has already declared that he would try for 12 or 16 hours next. I’ll make sure to give you an update in my next blog.

Our Pathways

You probably all already know about our pathways, but in case someone doesn’t, I’ll tell you a bit about them. Before the start of our journey, we all chose a pathway – a topic we specialize in.

We have three pathways: Science, media, and economics. Each pathway has a teacher responsible for it: Lea for science, Jacob for economics and Malte for media. Malte has been recording podcasts with his group since Vigo, but the other pathways have been fairly inactive – until today.

Cabin Change

Today was the last cabin change of our journey – another sign that, slowly but surely, we’re on our way back home. The boys democratically decided that they would only change beds, so they only had to clean. But for the girls, our teachers came up with a plan so it wouldn’t end in such chaos as it did when we had the cabin change in Tenerife.

We would all pack our things, and then the science pathway, plus half of the media pathway for documentation, would go on a little trip so we wouldn’t stand in each other’s way. We went to a small beach to do a little beach cleanup and after we finished that, we could change our beds in relative peace, as the first group had already finished. Then, we went on a trip with the economics pathway, who conducted a little survey in town.

Beach Cleanup

Our team:

For about an hour, we eagerly searched the beach for any type of trash we could find, documented our finds and put them in a trash bag. We found a lot for such a small beach – about 36 m² – and we ended up with three big trash bags, not completely full, but still.

The beach before and after:

After we got back to our ship, we sorted the trash and to no one’s surprise, most of it was plastic – the rest was mostly shoes. I found a few pretty glass shards, their edges already softened by waves and sand.

Bunk Rating

For the girls, I did the rating by myself, but because I don’t have a good knowledge of the boys’ beds, I asked Toni for his professional opinion.

All of our beds have a number, so I’ll use them and try to give a short explanation of where the bed is located. First, I’d like to mention that none of the bunks are actually long, wide, or by any means spacious – just that there’s always worse…

Ratings are influenced by personal preferences 🙂 (for example, I like the top beds more than the ones at the bottom).

Even numbers are top bunks, odd numbers are bottom bunks.

12er Girls Cabin

7/10
9/10
7/10
9/10
1/10
7/10
6/10
8/10
7/10
8/10
2/10
9/10

1-4 = middle part
5-8 = starboard
9-12 = port side

4er Boys Cabin
13. 8/10
14. 9/10
15. 8/10
16. 10/10

4er Girls Cabin
17. 8/10
18. 10/10
19. 7/10
20. 8/10

(We’ll ignore the teachers 😉 21-24)

6er Boys Cabin
25. 7/10
26. 8/10
27. 9/10
28. 8/10
29. 7/10
30. 10/10

If I have the time, I’ll do a more detailed rating in my next blog, but for today, that’s enough.

Our Plans

This part should have been in my last blog, but since it was already so long, I saved it for the next one. If you’re living with 36 other people on a ship, you need a lot of planning so everything works the way it should.

How do our plans work?

What kind of plans we have:

Watch schedule
Teaching days
Galley duty
Green plan
Meal plan

Watch & Lesson Plan

So that our concept with the alternating watch and teaching days works, we first had to be divided into two groups – port and starboard, as we were creatively called.

One group has lessons from around 09:00 to 17:30, of course with breaks and an island, which is a bit more relaxed because you can decide for yourself what you do. But so that all groups are on the same level, every lesson is scheduled two days in a row.

The watch group does eight hours of watch a day, with five (or four) people on starboard watches and only four (or three) on port watches, which may sound a bit unfair, but it is balanced out by the fact that starboard often has galley duty on a Sunday.

Within the watch groups, the areas of responsibility are divided between A, B, and C watches:

A watch: foreship with anchor, bow lines, jib, and boom jib (square sail)
B watch: amidships with schooner, fenders, and gangway (square sail)
C watch: aft with mainsail and stern lines

There are no lessons on Sundays and therefore each group only has to do four hours of watch and is otherwise free, which is why it is, of course, particularly unpleasant to have to do the galley all day on this half-free day. In return, a port person steers for about 40 minutes more a day.

Cooking & Green Plan

On a watch day, one person from each watch (A, B, C) is on galley duty, which is why we actually only have three people in port and four in starboard watches, but that way, nobody misses lessons.

That’s why it’s always a bit complicated when someone in the port galley is sick because the person who replaces the galley has to be replaced in their watch, as there always have to be at least three people on watch. We also have the same problem when someone from the watch falls ill in general, which is why teachers or our medic have often stepped in.

While the watch provides the galley, the teaching group provides the six people for the green plan. The tasks of the green plan are to clean the toilets and showers every day, empty the rubbish, refill toilet paper and vacuum the mess room. By the way, there used to be five people in the green plan, but after our vacuum cleaner broke on the Atlantic – because it flew across the mess room a few times a day due to heavy rocking – it was introduced that the mess room always had to be vacuumed by two people: one vacuuming, the other holding the vacuum cleaner.

Meal Plan

Breakfast: 07:30 a.m.
Lunch: 12:00 p.m.
Teatime: 15:30 p.m.
Dinner: 18:00 p.m.
Duration: approx. 30 min

If you compare the meal times with the watch schedule, you may notice that some of the meal times overlap with the watch times. Since the watchman cannot simply leave his post, a solution had to be found for this too. So the 04:00-08:00 watch always eats breakfast after everyone else at 08:00, the 12:00-16:00 watch eats lunch at 11:30 before everyone else and for dinner, the 16:00-20:00 watch is replaced by the same watch but from the teaching group for a few minutes.

New letters for You

Maybe a letter from the Johnny is just on its way to you right now. Since our last crew is leaving tomorrow, we can give them letters for home, which they will bring back to Germany and then to a post office, where they can be sent to you. It makes it a lot easier for us to send letters back home and I didn’t count them, but I’d think there may have been around 50 letters. Thanks to Johan for this, since he’s paying for the stamps.

That’s it from my side – we’re all already excited for our second Atlantic crossing and hope we’ll be spared from seasickness this time. I hope you like my blog and maybe you learned something you didn’t know yet. 🙂

French Part

Depuis le 1er mars, nous sommes aux Bermudes, plus précisément dans le port de l’île de Saint George. Les Bermudes sont très belles, mais un peu chères. Nous espérions tous quelques nouveautés pour la deuxième traversée de l’Atlantique, mais avec les prix actuels, peu de gens pourront en acheter suffisamment pour la traversée. Aujourd’hui, nos lits sont changés pour la quatrième et dernière fois. Afin d’éviter un chaos complet comme à Tenerife, les professeurs ont cette fois-ci imaginé un concept. Nous avons donc emballé toutes nos affaires et avons échangé les lits en deux groupes. Un groupe a emménagé dans ses nouveaux lits, tandis que l’autre est sorti avec son groupe Pathway, par exemple, Science Pathway a effectué un nettoyage de plage. Ensuite, les groupes ont été échangés et l’autre groupe a changé de lit.

Après avoir fait mon lit, je suis monté pour la première fois au mât avec mon frère, mais malheureusement, nous n’avons pas de photos, car nous n’avions pas emporté le téléphone média avec nous. Une fois que tout le monde avait fait son lit, il y avait du gâteau pour l’anniversaire de Jana, et ensuite, nous avions du temps libre à terre. Pour le dîner, Maja et son équipe de cuisine nous ont préparé une pizza.

Ce soir-là, nous avons dormi pour la première fois dans nos nouveaux lits, les mêmes dans lesquels nous dormirons à notre arrivée à Amsterdam, ce qui nous a donné des sentiments mitigés

Greetings:

Maja: An meinen lieben großen Bruder, Happy Birthday! Der Kokoskuchen aus meiner Backschaft heute war in Gedanken auch an Dich (wenn ich wieder da bin, backe ich Dir gerne was immer du möchtest). Ich hab‘ Dich ganz doll lieb <3

Katharina: Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, Peter!