Date: 15.11.2022
Author: Benjamin
Position: Harbour of Lisbon
Geographical Position: 3842,1N 00909,6W
Etmal: 1632 nm

Although this stop on our journey was not intended, I am sure everyone of the Pelican Crew had loads of fun in such a beautiful city of Lisbon. Furthermore, the warm weather in the last few days was a very nice addition to keep everyone’s mood up. After some extra days due to engine problems on the ship we are now planning on finally continuing our way to Tenerife tomorrow morning, after everything has been fixed.

Working on ourselves

Today our morning started with some training. While half of us were out on the welldeck with Connor and Elisa (our new recently joined Bosun), practicing the names of all those thousands of ropes and lines on the Pelican, the other half was informed by Simon (first mate) on how to properly react in a case of fire on the ship.

We got to know the different fire extinguishers and against which types of fires they are used. Additionally, Simon told us about the parts of the ship where a fire would be very dangerous and how to prevent from all kind of risks.

For all the students that still have problems with remembering the names of the ropes (including myself ;)), which are attached to all parts of the ship, the people on deck were divided into two groups and had a competition on finding ten different ropes and coming back again while holding a potato between their legs. Personally, this helped me a lot and it was very fun to watch the others jumping around the deck.

Self-Reflection

Later, Benno assembled all of us to have our first self-reflection. First for the whole group, when we discussed about how well we fulfilled the rules/standards that were set and collected by ourselves at the start of the voyage. Those including respectful behavior to everyone, keeping all the public spaces tidy (for example the messroom) and, of course, having a lot of fun. But as expected at a place where so many people live together on such a small space, not everything works perfectly fine. This was especially visible in the galley and the messroom, where some of the dishes had been left unwashed. Another point was our little “cuproach” problem, which basically describes when people stack their cups everywhere (mostly the messroom and the picknick tables) without actually washing them or putting them in the galley.

As you might know, each of us students have our own book with important information about seamanship and our voyage. This book also contains weekly self-reflection pages with which we started working today. From now on we can use those to reflect our weeks and work on ourselves.

Benno’s Birthday

Definitely worth mentioning is Benno´s Birthday. The whole ships-company met on the welldeck to sing “Happy Birthday” for him and combined with the delicious carrot cake from our cook Abby, it was the perfect end of our last day in Lisbon. As a sign of our great teamwork in the last few weeks, we also did a small celebration act called a “team rocket”, where everyone starts clapping on their knees in a certain rhythm and we all shout “team Pelican” together. We are all very thankful for the effort of all our teachers to keep us entertained every single day ashore, even when there’s an unexpected delay, by organizing shoreleave*, bus trips to all different kinds of interesting attractions and planning our next days.

*Messroom: meeting room for school and where the whole crew eats
*Galley: kitchen