Week 8… week 8??!! Wow. And again wow wow. Where are these days going?
I am more than halfway through my internship on board and I do not even realize how far we have already come!

This week was very busy with loading and discharging. Discharging our RDF (garbage bills) deep cleaning the hold with apple 🍏 chemicals, leaving Norrköping to Jättersön, also Sweden 🇸🇪, to load wood pulp for Rauma Finland 🇫🇮 and then direction Kotka 🇫🇮…. a few touches and goes with 6-8 hours in the harbour and of course arrivals and departures usually in the middle of the night or during meal times… all seafarers know it usually happens this way 😂.

Pretty proud of saying i was in charge of all these cargo operations, ballasting included 💪🏻 and that it went pretty well indeed! It was a lot of fun and even what I thought would be challenging: the weather getting colder and colder here 🥶, I am still playing “onion” with layers and haven’t taken out the big winter coverall…. at 5 am with 30knots of wind 💨 opening hatches are not that fun but it just reminds me I have spent two seasons in Antarctica and good old memories of furling sails up in a frozen rigging were the coolest thing ever. 😎. Burning fingers and ears and runny sniffy nose is soon going to be my daily state. Just a good preparation for skiing season right? 🎿

This week workwise was pretty interesting: the cargo we transport (what do companies do with wood pulp: pretty cool and super clean and lots of fun inflating air cushions to seafasten the blocks!) the new places I have never been too: Sweden and the first time in Finland! Ok well so… I have only seen the coast right, but it is as if… ok I really miss exploring new places I admit. I am lucky I don’t even have time to think of it though. One day I will travel more. I know. It is in my blood.

And well ending the week with a day at anchor out of Kotka to recharge and call my MOM ♥️ yeah…. that is what I call recharging… I hope you don’t always read in these posts that everything seems so easy for me to achieve…. being a “trainee with experience” is not always the easiest position and letting go is something I am working hard on. My parents are the only people on this 🌍 to whom i can sometimes empty all those feelings i keep for myself and they will not change there opinion on me and i love them to death for that ♥️!

So there went week 8 a spooky 👻 week but a good week on the move! I shall remind myself a bit more often to take a daily happy picture again because I am having fun despite me 📚!
The good thing is that challenges can always be overcome with help from up there 🌟 , love and trust! ✌🏻

Take care all! Lots of love Sophie xx✌🏻 ⚓️ ♥️ @ Rauma, Finland