What can you legally do on watch?

Ship: Regina Maris
Date: 11th of March 2025
Position: North Atlantic Ocean
Geographical Position: 32°20.406’N 055°24.539’W
Etmal: 146nm
Total: 9503nm

On watch, you always have four hours to fill, in which you have to steer the ship, check the engine room (not anymore, because now it’s forbidden for all students except Hannes and the watchleaders), make entries in the logbook, put the position on the map and sometimes set some sails.

But besides that? What does one do the whole time when there’s not much to do on watch?

Reading and other distractions are forbidden – believe me, I tried. Too often was I disturbed by a mad-looking Anna, who almost confiscated my e-reader, or a gloating Janno, who almost threw my nose flute overboard.

The easiest answer to the question would be: Being seasick. That’s what we did the whole time from Amsterdam to Vigo, and that’s what we’re doing now on account of a little storm we’re in at the moment that Marie so delightfully named Hans Dieter.

Besides the uncertainty of when the next time to vomit is, being seasick has one advantage: You practically have one good, very good reason not to work on specific school stuff and presentations because even teachers get seasick and can reconstruct this feeling very well. Unfortunately, you also aren’t able to do anything else besides lying around like a dead fish.

But after two or three days, most people are used to the feeling of being on a shaky ship again, so they can finally do things.

On watch, a common thing against boredom is listening to music at the steering wheel, not too loud, because this disturbs the watch officers – or sitting next to the person who’s steering, if allowed by your watch officer.

Near the steering wheel, there’s a little corner consisting of a bench and the roof of the wheelhouse, where normally up to five people can sit and talk. But, god beware, you have watch and are lying around, or, even worse, on a bean bag and your watch officer catches you. That can get you into trouble, so we always are attentive if an adult is leaving the wheelhouse.

Also, about tablets for the daily reports, there are split opinions: Our watch officer Marie doesn’t care and we really like having them, but then there’s Anna, our watchleader, who wants us to have more discipline on watch and is always standing except for dinner. Of course, they are against distractions from our tasks. So our motto is: Just do it, maybe Anna doesn’t notice you have a tablet or an e-reader right now.

A funny pastime we like to do is stalking the galley or the people in the messroom through the windows, often unnoticed. A funny shout and a quick hiding afterward can cause a lot of confusion down there.

Because of the crew’s high consumption of coffee, the watch has to go downstairs to cook coffee once or twice. Even though most people can do it, there still are some who, after fifty tries, still get a very strong espresso (Hello, Arvid! ) or need a step-by-step explanation by Rainer (Maxim, who also calls his mother when he doesn’t know how to clean something).

If your name is Malte, Janno or Arvid, you might also enjoy annoying the crew with the same questions and jokes all over again.

Eating on watch is always an experience: sometimes, you get to eat none of your parmesan because the wind blew it all away, you suddenly have something in your hair that later turns out to be a salad leaf from someone else or your whole plate’s contents roll all over the floor. And afterward, you have to clean it all up, otherwise the crew gets mad.

The later the evening, the better the ideas – isn’t this a saying? At least, it would perfectly match our watches.

When it’s dark and stars and the moon are coming out, we just have the best notions. At what other time would someone think of tying a rope to a bucket and trying to catch bioluminescent jellyfish?

Or producing chocolate ice cream from vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce mixed with a hand drill, sitting in front of the vent with hot air to make it smooth faster? Which Leonore, Christian and I unfortunately couldn’t do for too long in our evening watch because Marie was annoyed pretty fast and we had to put it all away.

So you see, there’s a lot you can do, even with a few restrictions. And if you just sit there and stare at the ocean, you may have one of the few alone times to think.

Anmerkungen:

Talea und Marilen: Viele Grüße an Ebermut Rudolf! Wir haben deine Birnenzwiebeln gefunden

Chris: Ich sitze gerade am Galley-Boden, wir haben mit bis zu 40 Grad Schräglage gekocht und jetzt endlich eine Pause… mir geht es aber trotzdem gut, ganz liebe Grüße an euch!!