Tons of problems and tons of corals

Ship: Regina Maris
Date: 3rd of January 2025
Position: Isla de Providencia
Geographical Position: 13°22.553‘N 081°22.652‘W
Etmal: 0nm
Total: 7049nm

My day started at 6:27 a.m. with the sweet and calm words: „You have anchor watch now! You are the only one who hasn’t been on watch yet and doesn’t have galley work today!“ The person who woke me up had done three and a half hours of anchor watch alone (poor guy 😕).

Well, it was a little chaos with the anchor watch system between 2 and 9 a.m., but fortunately, we didn’t sink!

As soon as we finished breakfast, we motored our way to one of the biggest Caribbean coral reefs, which wasn’t far from Isla de Providencia at all (just two hours away, but the ship was rocking very hard, so some people got seasick again).

Before we could dive at the coral reef, we needed a short briefing about the hazards and marine life there, given by Ester – who was a deep diving instructor before becoming an officer.

The people who wanted to go were separated by watch. For example, I’m in the Bravo watch, so I went on the second tour, while the Charlie watch went on the third tour.

BUT before we could enter the boat, Heine made an announcement about the condition of the ship, and it wasn’t pretty news at all.

First off, we’re using more water than the water maker can produce, so we need to reduce our laundry and shower time.
Second problem: One of our two generators broke down (the cooling system failed, and coolant leaked all over the engine room, according to Hannes), and we need two generators for the voyage to operate as a high-sea sailing ship.
Third problem: The connector from the batteries to shore also broke 🫠, but Hannes will repair it because „Hannes kann es“ („Hannes can do it“).
And many more smaller, less relevant problems, such as the ship’s horn, the anchor heaving system having bad contact with the electricity and so on and so forth.

After the long list of ship problems, we finally headed to the coral reef with our snorkeling equipment. We took the small 15hp dinghy, with Arne and Ester as caretakers, dropped anchor in a non-coral area and went diving.

A lot of us saw many corals in different shapes and colors, as well as a rainbow fish and many Dories (the blue-yellow fish from Finding Nemo – unfortunately, nobody saw a clownfish).

But Christian and Max saw a shark about two meters long! It was too fast to capture a picture of it, though 🫤.

While we were looking for corals and fish, Arne was hunting fish. He brought his speargun and tried to catch something for dinner… he caught one small fish out of four bigger ones (some up to a meter long). We stayed at the reef for 30 very fast-moving minutes because other people were waiting for their turn.

Overall, the coral reef was beautiful and colorful, but the experience was too short – so 8/10.

At the end of the day, the galley made delicious pizza, which took ages to prepare, but it was worth it.

Arne’s small trophy is currently stored in the refrigerator in the galley (which is partially working because it takes a lot of electricity – not ideal for a semi-broken generator).

And with that, February 3rd is over. Good night!

Bemerkungen:

Leon: Hi, die Karte funktioniert ohne Probleme und die Post habe ich am 27.1. schon bekommen. Vielen Dank❤️❤️❤️ Bb

Leonore: Hi, mir geht’s immer noch gut! Ich vermisse euch ❤️❤️❤️ BIRNENZWIEBELN

Anneke: Hi Hi, von den Briefen ist leider nur einer angekommen. Den anderen werde ich hoffentlich in Kuba bekommen. Ich habe euch alle ganz dolle lieb <3 bis zum Mond und zurück.

Jana: Hey Lene, alles alles Gute zum Geburtstag 🥳. Lass‘ Dich heute feiern! Ich denk an Dich 🙂