1st Term ~ Week 9. ⚓🚢

Here I am in Varberg 🇸🇪. We arrived Saturday afternoon. And we are not scheduled to load the vessel before Tuesday morning. And the weather is… very winding with quite some heavy rain from now and then.

We left Sluiskil full of Fertilizer last Tuesday evening and headed directly to Rostock. A fast passage through the Kieler Kanal and two small days discharging. A fertilizer is a cargo that cannot get wet. Absolutely not. I was carefully checking the sky and the clouds for any small doubt of drops falling; ready to close the hatches. Luckily I only had to close them twice and only for 10 minutes or so. Sometimes it happens that you spend your time counting drops and opening-closing opening-closing. But we were lucky this time.

Were only told last minute in Rostock where our following voyage would be: Varberg to Aveiro in Portugal then Spain back to the Netherlands… niiice 🙂 a bit of summertime and nice weather! 👍🏻 ☀️ 🏖 🏊‍♀️
In Rostock, one of our ABs flew home to Indonesia 😞and we had to welcome a new crew to our team! 😊
But yeah I was then told I would probably disembark in Varberg! And there my quick calculations started in my 🧠 brains and … suddenly realized that I had less than 200nM to get ready: prepare the ship for a good handover, write it, make sure the maintenance was on schedule (of course it was… 😉 – not kidding it actually was! 💪🏻) but then flights were booked for mid-week. 😅 I had lots of spare time as everything was ready! 😂

Our new captain is very (still) nice. I asked myself several times if I wouldn’t/ couldn’t stay until Portugal, or maybe Spain?… and even said I could still cancel the flights as my relief officer wasn’t gone yet! I think I take it as a compliment. Right? I am probably not such a bad person after all and maybe I am also okay in my work too…

Sometimes I have periods of big doubts and this week was one of those. It was pretty tough. Pretty lonely. And difficult to reach out to the people that matter most to us. We are all busy in our routines and it feels sometimes pretty empty and tough and I just wondered if I am even good at my job and why I do this.

Sailing out of Rostock/ Warnemunde, I saw Tolkien one of the dutch tall ships alongside, then further Morgenster was sailing fully rigged ⛵️ and it was awesome to look at. And then again shivers. I miss my sails, my friends. What am I doing here again? Yes, it was a really tough and lonely week and not being able to get out of it just because I am a sophie and overthinking too much… are there any other Sophie’s out there? Or is this only me? 💔

Luckily Varberg was there and loading only planned for a few days. My maintenance done, handover done, I enjoyed a couple of good walks despite the strong wind and spars rain. Varberg has quite a few places to go out. I am too corona concerned to go in there. Hopefully, we will be back! They have a natural swimming pool in the sea, great! Swam 45 min doing laps in 9-degree water. Loved it. No one wanted to swim from the vessel with me. Eventually W. our trainee joined me later for a dip. 🙂 then cappuccino, cake and sweets with a chick-flick in my bed. Perfect Sunday! 🙂 ❤️

The vessel will be departing without me in a few days and it will feel very strange. But I am looking forward to seeing my family and the zoo at home.
Remember: keep your social distances people. It’s not over. Till then, see you next term!😉 😘
Sopietje ⚓️ ✌🏻

@ Varberg, Sweden