Date: 22th December 2019
Author: Silja
Position: Lagoon near Curaçao
Geographical Position: 11°59.6N/ 068°46.0W
Etmal: 114 nm

It starts if you get to an anchorage with some ships around. Everyone just immediately gets their camera or phone out and starts filming and taking photos. Or some motorboats even starts to drive around you to get some footage.

It’s even worse when you’re going into a harbour. Just everyone who’s around the harbour starts to take photos and you feel like you’re on a red carpet. But that’s not it. It doesn’t stop because if you made the mistake to wear a Pelican T-Shirt if you go ashore, you will sometimes feel like you’re sitting in an interview.

But at least everyone is very nice and friendly and I really like to tell the people about the Pelican and Ocean College. You also get to know a lot of different people, especially sailors, and that’s really cool. But the best thing is when ferries start to drive in circles around you so all the passengers can admire the Pelican.

This has happened to us when we were waiting to go into the harbour in Vigo. That was the first time this actually happened to us and it was so weird, but also so funny how the people acted and I actually act exactly like this as well, when I see a ship like this, it’s just funny to see it from the perspective of the ship’s crew.

So, I’m going to tell you a story…

…about one thing that has happened to us while we were sailing towards Bequia, where we also had a situation, where the helmsman seemed to care a lot more about taking pictures, rather than steering.
We were sailing along the coast of St. Vincent when a catamaran sailed straight at us. We tried so get some space between us and change our course to starboard, just like the rules say, but the catamaran didn’t really care and didn’t change its course.

So, in the end we had to do a 360° to make sure we still followed the rules and didn’t let an accident happen. The craziest thing about this was, that while we were trying to avoid a collision, the helmsman of the catamaran just stood next to the helm and took pictures. That was really not the nicest experience we’ve had so far, because it was a dangerous situation.