Joshua

Recap time

Date: 24.11.2023
Nautical Position: Teneriffa
Etmal: 0 nm
Total: 1831 nm
Ship: Regina Maris

I am sitting here and writing this daily report after we arrived in Teneriffa 11 hours ago. Finally, there is no constant rolling and sagging of the ship, no constant loud roaring of the motor and no messed up sleep schedule of the nautical watches anymore.

So, again as I am sitting down in the wonderful silence and stability of the ship that we now have while in port I was brainstorming on what I could write here. The only thing that came to my mind were events from the proceeding trip.

So I decided to do a recap of the last few days. This was our first long exposure to the sailing life and life on board while being at sea so let’s start.

Start in Roscoff

It all started in Roscoff at the 15.11.23 with the preperation of operation seasickness.

There we filled the care boxes with tons of Zwieback and water, we also distributed buckets for all the puking that was going to happen (for more in-depth information to that operation you can read the daily report of that day).

Then we finally left port almost three hours later than planned (because we had to bunker fuel and the fueling truck came late). Then our journey started and like expected the vomiting started half an hour after we were on the ocean.

Seasickness

After that, the situation just deteriorated so that at the end of the day the seasickness was at it’s peak again. But this time it was not as much of a chaos as the last time, because the seasick people all tried to sleep in thier beds and not in the mess room and they tried to be on their watches. Also there only were few people who where seasick.

We first sailed to a little island where we sheltered for a single night avoiding a big storm with nine meter waves. A few days later we anchored at a bay in the north of Spain. When securing the ropes we all were on the main deck because the signal for all hands on deck rang.

The only bad thing in that whole situation was that the waves hit us very hard from the side which made them crash on deck. Many people were wet from head to toe after this encounter. Wet also was the word of the day because in the bay we went swimming! This was a lot of fun, especially jumping off the bowsprit. We left the same day after everyone got dressed again.

Deep Clean and School Start

Following that day we had our weekly deep clean with the little difference that we were at sea and everything was moving and everything didn’t stay in its place. But our experience of the last few deep cleans helped us a lot, so much that we managed to finish the deep clean in half a day, in comparison to the last time were we needed a whole day :-).

On the same day we crossed the height of Vigo and what did that mean? School started! Wowowowow! Which also meant that the watches were split and only six people are on watch at all times. After that, for the next three days nothing really happend, we saw a few more dolphins but nothing much until Thursday where the crew did an emergency stop drill.

Swimming in the middle of the Ocean

For this, they stopped the ship which gave us the opportunity to go on a little swim in the middle of the ocean.

Fire!

As the second “highlight ” of the day we had one real emergency, the fire alarm went off in the middle of school because our water maker had an electrical short. In this situation the song lyrics “ HHUUURRRAAA die schule brennt“ gets a whole new meaning.

But the fire was extinguished in a few seconds and we mustered in record time of 30 seconds. After that we sailed for another five hours and then we arrived in Tenerife. Which brings us to now. Those first few days of sailing were very eventful and gave us a first impression of how it’s going to be for the next five months. Let’s hope that there will be a lot more of these experiences on this journey (except for that one little fire) and less „Segeln and gucken was kommt“.


Grüße:

Lenara: Liebe Grüße aus Teneriffa an alle Zuhause, ich vermisse euch.

Isabel: Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, Jasso:)!!!!!

Knot interested?

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Date: 28.10.2023
Position: Scheveningen, Harbour
Etmal: 27 NM (total distance)
Schip: Regina Maris

We are still stuck in Scheveningen because of the brutal winds in the English Channel that even blow against us. So we used the spare time for a couple of lessons in seamanship. The ones who couldn’t climb up yesterday got the chance to do it today. Marie and Ben gave a lesson about splicing and Mathieu taught us how to tie the bowline, sheet bend, figure of eight, round turn & two half hitches, clove hitch and the reef knot. For those who wondered why they are even here 😉 Mathieu showed them the hangman’s knot in the mess room. To make this daily report a bit more interactive we thought that we will teach some of them to you.

Bowline:

The bowline is one of the most important knots on a ship. To tie the knot, follow these steps:

  1. Make a loop.
  2. Take one end of the rope and
    put it through the loop, coming
    from the back.
  3. Around the rope and back into
    the loop.
  4. At the end, pull at the rope on the
    positions which are marked

There are two sentences that can help you to understand the instructions better, which are:

1: You form a lake, a snake comes out of the lake and goes to a tree. Then it sees you and gets scared due to your ugliness, turns around the tree and goes back into the lake.

2: You open a bar, a man comes out of it, running to a tree and behind (around) it, vomits and returns to the bar.

We believe the other knots are easy to learn if you follow the pictures that are attached, because it´s an easy step by step tutorial.

Sheet bend:
Figure of eight:
Round turn & two half hitches:
Clove hitch:
Reef knot:
Hangman´s knot:

Before you get any wrong ideas, we wont be explaining how to tie the hangman´s knot.

We didn’t spend the whole day tying knots, we also listened to Max, who had his presentation about “Techniken der Videodokumentation auf Reisen – Was macht einen guten Videotagesbericht aus?”. After the presentation had ended, we joined our “groups of interest”, which were as following: arts, sports, dance, music and fishing.

And there was a great message today: Michael said we would leave tomorrow. We all were glad about that because we want to get away from this place. Not because it´s not nice here in Scheveningen, but we would like to sail, being on the ocean.

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