The last day on shore

Ship: Johnny
Date: 5th December 2024
Position: Atlantic
Nautical Position: 17° 01,2’N 025° 19,9’W
Etmal: 23 nautical miles
Total distance: 3092

Today was our last day on shore, before we started our journey to cross the Atlantic, which began at the bay where we swam with the turtles yesterday. Everyone had to get up at 05:30 so we could lift the anchor and set the sails.

Around 07:00, the all-hands was finished and we could all go back to our beds and sleep a little more. But since we’re back at sea, our normal watch schedule was running again.

After roughly one hour, we could already see the small village we would visit in the distance. Another 90min later, we were anchored again after a bit of a struggle with the depth of the water and also with our anchor, which, luckily, turned out fine.

By that point, it was almost lunchtime and while the tables were already set, Vera, Fynn and I still had a bit of time for some quick rounds of “Halt mal kurz,” a game I was really sad I hadn’t brought with me, but luckily Carlotta brought it.

Surprisingly, quite a few people on board know „Die Känguru-Chroniken“, which leads to us constantly quoting and swapping the first letters of two-word phrases (for example: turning „Pannenbaum“ into „Pannetaum“). For example: A Pannetaum would really boost our Christmas spirit, but sadly there’s no space for one.

When the food was ready, everyone ate soup and we also had some leftover banana bread from yesterday for dessert. During lunch, the Regina Maris appeared on the horizon — maybe they overslept.

After we finished eating, Jacob told us that we would swim to the village with our dry bags, which caused quite a bit of chaos, because most of us still had our bags in the storage room in the girls‘ cabin, which we all started calling „das Loch,“ so we had to get them first. After everything was packed and we were all in swimwear, we jumped into the water and swam to shore.

Sadly, not all of our dry bags kept our stuff dry. For example, my towel was dripping. Luckily, there were no electronics in the bag, so we just laid everything in the sun and it dried up in no time.

Shortly after us, the Reggies also reached the beach and we went to visit the small school of the village, where we got a little glimpse into school life in such a small and somewhat isolated village.

Then we split into three groups: One went hiking with Malte… The others played soccer… And the last option was to go swimming.

At around 16:00, everyone was pretty exhausted from either swimming, walking or running after a ball, so the teachers gave us the signal to pack up and swim back. We had to say our goodbyes to the Reggies, with whom some of us had already formed good friendships from the few times we had met them.

In the end, we left the shore with the knowledge that this would be the last bit of land we would touch and also see for the next two to three weeks.

Back on our Johnny, we made sure the deck and our cabins were sea-safe. After that, we set our sails simultaneously with the Reggies and took some beautiful pictures of our joint „departure.“

Then the drone flew back to the Reggie and we got a radio call from them, saying that they would take down their sails now, because the pictures were taken. We stayed back a while, because we hoped that their ship would sail into the sun so we could get some more beautiful pictures.

Our captain forgot (the Reggie did too) to make horn signals, so we didn’t get to say a final goodbye. Shortly after that, our captain gave the signal to take down the sails again because there wasn’t enough wind.

Dinner was accompanied by a lot of movement from the ship, so we all had to watch our plates. Even though some of us got a little seasick again, we all eagerly awaited the food, exhausted and hungry from the eventful day.

We sailed in the direction of the sun and all of us are excited for our first Atlantic crossing.

Greetings:

Nele: Alles Gute zum Geburtstag Luisa, ich hoffe, Du hattest einen wunderschönen Tag❤️