Waves, Bread and other Adventures

Ship: Johann Smidt
Date: 02.02.2026
Position: 19°06,7’N, 083°38,3’W
Geographical position: A few miles from Jamaica
Etmal: 145 nm
Total: 7.601,6 nm

Normal people like to start their day with their favourite alarm, a cup of coffee, a bit of sport and a delicious breakfast. Maybe you started your day like that. My day had a different start. At 03:30 a quiet voice woke me up with the wonderful message: “Wake up, it’s time for your watch.”

While standing up, I had to face my first challenge: Waves. They move everything, so I was pushed into every wall on my way to the bridge. At 04:00 our watch began and four hours of work were ahead of us. As usual, we began with the regular work: Steering and writing down our weather observations.

That changed when Frank, our first helmsman, went a round over deck to check all the lines. It’s like that nearly every watch. Frank goes out to check if everything is fine and, of course, nothing is fine.

Today our “Sturmklüver”, which was attached to the railing, was pulled down by the sea. One metallic string ripped and the Sturmklüver nearly went overboard. If Frank hadn’t seen this, we would have had one sail less on board.

After pulling the sail in, which was rather hard because the waves drew it back into the water, we secured it more safely. In the end, we were completely wet. On our way back, another thing caught Frank’s eye. A sail fell out of the “Segelkoje”, a large plane which covers and secures all the sails.

This plane was not tightened enough. So Frank also saved this sail’s life from its watery destiny. The rest of our watch was rather quiet and nothing special occurred.

Finally, 08:00. Time for breakfast. The other watches had already eaten; now it was our turn. It’s always like that at meals, because one watch has to control the ship. After this early start into the day, most of my watch went back to their beds.

I had to bake some bread. Every day, two of us have to bake bread. It’s not possible to go to a bakery and buy some delicious bread here. We have to do it ourselves.

There are different kinds of bread: The chewy one, the hard one, the burned one and the one kind of bread we eat since three months, because nobody has the time or energy to try something new and this bread is easy to make.

That is why I pulled myself together and did something different. I took another kind of flour and made a darker kind of bread. It was not a lot of work and I hope it’s better than the other bread, because I really can’t see the same kind of white bread anymore. Having prepared the dough, I went to bed and slept until lunch.

After lunch, some more sail work had to be done. Two days ago we had to pull down our „Klüver“ (a small sail on our very front), because four „Staggreiter“ (some kind of metallic snap hook on which the sail is attached to the ship) were ripped out of the sail by the storm.

Today we knotted them back on, which sounds easier than it was. The waves crushed over our heads sometimes and it was very difficult to do anything because you had to cling onto something. As we finally accomplished our work, we were wet but all cheered up.

It’s a fantastic feeling to stand at the very front of a ship which gets lifted up by a wave, flying and after that thrown down into the water. After a warm shower and some new dry clothes, we had some cookies and tea. Later on, we worked in our pathway groups on some projects we started on Providencia. Two hours later, I went back to watch.

As always, there was something to do for us. This time, the line which holds and controls the „Klüver“ looked as if it could break easily. So we took another line from the other side and brought it into a good position. Then we pulled it so hard that the unstable line had nothing to hold anymore.

Tomorrow we have to find a better solution, but because of nightfall, we fixed it like that.

In the evening, we heard Ruby’s pathway presentation about Sebastião Salgado, an artist who tried to show the suffering of poor people on earth. It was very interesting and Ruby did a good job explaining all the information.

Now I am sitting in the Messe, reflecting on the day. It was cool to do so much sail handling. The storm brought a lot of this work, so it’s nothing like sailing in the Caribbean Sea. Nonetheless, I enjoy these days of work and high waves.

They are days full of adventure and moments where your heart starts racing. Those are the days where we feel the power of the ocean and can sense the danger of the wind. These days are days of braveness and courage, where we prove ourselves as a team and to ourselves.

Those are the days where we grow in our hearts and become people of the sea.

Greetings:

Nepomuk: Ihr Lieben, jetzt gibt es endlich mal wieder Grüße. Ich hoffe es geht euch allen gut! Ich mache mich wieder auf zu kälteren Gewässern und freue mich sehr, euch alle im April wieder zu sehen. Jetzt muss ich aber noch ein paar Abenteuer erleben! An meine Geschwister: Philomena, Vincent, Cäcilie, Bernadette, Sixtina und Clemens, ich hab‘ euch lieb und schicke euch so ganz herzliche
Grüße! Dicken Kuss in die Runde!