Date: 29th December 2022
Author: Lea
Position: Union Island
Nautical Position: 12°34’8 N 061°26’4 W
Etmal: 5767NM
Ship: Pelican of London

The night at the beach and the morning after

… against Lennox’ hopes it didn’t stay with mosquito bites. Around 23:00 the ones who slept already were suddenly woken up in a rude way: It started raining.

Some of us took it very easily, just laughed about getting wet and were happy that their sleeping bags are waterproof, but there were also people who weren’t happy and couldn’t laugh about getting wet.

After the rain was gone we tried to sleep again… but at midnight the same thing happened again, even heavier now. The guys who had problems with the first rain even wanted to go home, but the crew wasn’t able to pick them up because the wind was too strong to launch the rib.

For me, I really enjoyed the night and didn’t really realize the second rain and just closed my sleeping bag up to my head and kept on sleeping. Also, I enjoyed this morning pretty much, waking up with the sunlight, walking around at the beach while most of the others were still sleeping and just enjoyed the fact that we are here.

Normal problems and more delay for the Pelican

As soon as Janice and Connor picked us up to get us back to the Pelican we got briefed. Our water household has gone worse again. I was in the second rib and got told to not shower but only a couple of minutes later, at the time when the fourth rib arrived, we weren’t even allowed to wash our hands, so just drink the water.

Luckily, the situation now is a little bit better, at least we can use the toilets…BUT… they are broken…our vacuum pump is broken and now we can only use the dog kennels, so we only have two toilets for 47 people… which leads to my next topic.

At the moment we are anchored in front of Ashton Harbour on Union Island. The plan was to be here for just a few hours, to check out and then to head off to Panama.

But now we are here and no one knows for how long and where the next stop is. There are a few possible options because our vacuum pump is broken: Option A is that our engineer finds the spare part on the ship and we can carry on as planned.

Option B is that we find a new part on shore and can get it without problems.

Option C, the option with probably the most delay, would be that we can’t find the part and our office needs to order a new one. In this case we need to ask the coast guards if we are allowed to pick it up in a near port.

So, as I write this report, some of the crew and teachers are doing fruit and vegetable shopping and the rest of us is on the ship, sleeping, helping with ship’s stuff, doing school work, watching movies or writing daily reports.

Still, a nice and funny end of the day

But at the end, we made and make the best out of the situation – as always. We just had a really nice sunset swim jumping from the Pelican. Even though it was more a rain swim than a sunset swim, we had very much fun and some learned new interesting ways to jump in the water.

Have a nice time, see you next year!

Greetings

Lea: Viele Grüße an meine Eltern. Passt gut auf Tinka auf an Silvester und guckt eine Runde Dinner for One für mich mit. Ich hab euch lieb. Außerdem grüße ich Opa und Moni. Für Moni: Wir wurden bei der Übernachtung gestern von Regen überrascht. Ich habe sie trotzdem sehr genossen und jetzt kriegen wir wieder Verspätung, da mal wieder etwas an dem Schiff kaputt ist. Hab euch lieb, bis bald.
Zusätzlich wünsche ich allen, die das lesen, schonmal einen Guten Rutsch!
Franzi S.: Ich grüße meine Familie und alle anderen von zuhause, die diesen Bericht unter Umständen lesen. Ich hoffe, euch geht es allen gut und wünsche euch vorträglich schon mal einen guten …