One day in galley duty

Date: 10.12.2023
Geographical Position: 16°52.7’N 027°56.6’W
Etmal: 139 nm
Total: 2940 nm
Ship: Regina Maris

Today I had galley duty, which means I had the task of helping our cook in the galley (the kitchen on a ship) prepare the meals. Every day, three of us, one from each watch, have galley duty. Normally, one person prepares breakfast, one prepares lunch, and one prepares dinner.

However, we help each other out and work together as a team. „There is no I in Team“ – except when you write it in capital letters and look at the white blank space of the A in between its lines.

The dishes, for example, we always do together because it goes way faster, and you need at least two people anyway. When someone is cleaning the dishes, another person needs to dry everything; otherwise it would get way too full on the counters.

And this is an actual problem in our galley, but I will come back to this later on. First, I will explain how a normal day in the galley looks like.

Breakfast

The person who is responsible for breakfast has to be in the galley one hour before breakfast. That is enough time to prepare everything. Usually, that means at seven o’clock. This morning it was me, so I was woken up at a quarter to seven.

I thought I would be alone because, for a few days, we’ve been preparing breakfast without our cook so he can get more sleep, which means we get a happier cook, which means we get better food. But then Lilia and Isabel were already in the galley baking a cake because today is a special day—it’s Andreas‘ birthday! 🙂

Lunch and dinner

For lunch, we begin with „schnibbeling“ everything as soon as we have finished the breakfast dishes. Sometimes we also start preparing the stuff for dinner, so mostly it is not only one of us doing each meal but rather at least two working together.

And today, we broke every routine rule because I was seasick again and ate my breakfast the other way around (I had to throw up) after being in the galley for one hour.

So, because I wasn’t really able to stay inside, we did it like this: Leo and Lizzy cleaned the dishes almost the whole day, and I helped by cutting the vegetables for dinner because I could do that outside.

Difficulties

Although we have a normal galley routine, everyone knows there are always some problems suddenly appearing.

For example, people who are so kind to clean the tables but need a rag for it, the people on watch because they also want to eat, but they are on the poop deck, and we have to serve them through the window, or the people who have to clean heads and showers and disturb us from doing the dishes because they want to take some hot water for that.

As you can see, there are not some problems but one main problem—people coming in. This is because it is already crowded in our galley with the three galley duty people working at one time, so extra people coming in are very annoying. But all in all, I really like having galley duty.

Maybe not while I am seasick, but in general, it can be a lot of fun. And I am really looking forward to my galley duty on the 24th of December. ✨Christmas time 🎄✨

P.S.: 20:02 💞

P.P.S.: Elisabeth: Viel Glück bei der Physik Schulaufgabe, Paulinaaaaa!