Author: Phil
Date: 31th December 2019
Geographical position: Caribbean sea, on our way to Panama
Nautical Position: 10°37.1‘N/ 80°14.0‘W
Etmal: 146 nm

I’m waking up,
my head hurts,
I look around,
It is dark,
That’s good, darkness doesn’t hurt,
Light does,
I can hear a pretty highfrequent tone,
make it stop,
where is the ear protection,
ah, they’re laying next to my head,
quick,
I put it over my ears,
that’s better, so much better,
I look at my watch: it’s 9 o’clock.

All A watches are now in school, red B on watch. The rest of my shipmates will be woken up in half an hour for seamanship. And I? I’m gonna try and fight the boredom. At about 10:00 Tamsin comes by to see how Linus and I are doing and she will give me something against my headache.

Then I’m going to wait untill 12:15, blindfold myself with a towel and head up into the messroom. I still need to eat something. The towel? My headache gets worse when I see light and therefore I blindfold myself. After I have eaten something I head back down again while still hearing the giggling about my funny outfit through the ear protection. Back down I ask Linus if I can borrow his MP3-Player and listen to the podcast of Star Wars the Clone Wars despite my sensibility to noise.

Sometime after the one o’clock meeting, Tamsin comes to see how we DOOMED are doing and to give me something else against my headache.

As it is about to reach it’s peak, I just lay there in embrional-position pressing my arms on my head. Please make it stop, someone please!
After about a minute it gets better, and the headache gets back to normal so I can deal with it again. At quarter to seven I get my sunglasses, blindfold myself again, get the second ear protection and head up again to find a seat in the messroom and wait till one of the galleyteam hands me my food and I can go out on the welldeck. Now it’s dark enough out there for me to sit there just with two ear protections, one put over the other, and my sunnglasses on. I finish my meal and go down into my bunk for another one or two hours.

Then, after Tamsin gave me my next pill and turned the light from day to night vision, I rise from the dead. Come to live and get active.

I put on my sunglasses and head up to see the last people that are still up and chilling in the messroom. While I get myself something from the leftover food out of the galley, I have a nice and quiet chat with them about what happened during the day. It feels good to finally talk to people again and get some news, to brake the isolation.

Then I go out on the welldeck, where it’s now dark and quiet, to get some fresh air and enjoy the peace. At the end of the day, at about eleven I go to sleep hoping tomorrow won’t be the same and I am fine again.

The Next day
I’m waking up at eleven o’clock,
My head doesn’t hurt anymore,
I turn on my bunklight,
still no headache,
after five minutes I realise,
I‘m alive,
I survived,
I can see daylight again,
Finally.
I survived five days of quarantäne on board the Tall Ship Pelican of London

I survived without getting sick from the other quarantäne inmates.
The desease I had is one of the worst possible: Migrane.

Those who didn’t experienced it yet might think of it as “just a headache” but let me tell you it is far worse. Since you can’t see light or hear noise without getting the pain off your life, there is not much you can do while in quarantäne. That’s how I spent the last days.