And this week is over. Another one gone. But I am glad it is over. This week had its highlights and its tough moments. Moments when I just wanted to be home. I thought to myself that over one year onboard I had never felt the will to not be on the ship, yet, there is always a first time right? It happened this week. Yes. Indeed. A challenging week for me. And I should probably write a deeper post about my thoughts on this… one day perhaps… 😉

But I am better now and have taken a bit of a tougher skin on my shoulders.

My original post had actually quite some extra paragraphs added. But I decided to not publish them again because it would only make harm. I was probably relieving some valves out there but this website is not made for personal anger towards specific people. I think I like sharing everyday situations because they could happen to all, and it is not because there is social media and a website that everything is always easy happy, and pretty. As a woman on board, and one year only in the shipping industry, life can sometimes be tough to be respected and accepted with the rest of the experience I have. You see, every day is a work in progress to becoming a better and more understandable person 😉

In Delfzijl we loaded in the sea harbour plasterboards. It is a nice cargo: it tolerates a few drops of rain and the stevedores hoist in our hold 2 electrical bobcats: we only need a couple of hatches open in the center of the ship and there it goes! Keeping the ship with a good trim makes it easier for them: they load fore and aft and do not need much instruction from outside. Besides you cannot enter the hold once they have started because they load all the way to the top, so entrances are blocked. The personnel goes in and out by being hoisted in a cage. It is funny.

Plasterboards are quite fragile if you have heavy weather it is apparently not a nice cargo to have. We made them seafast with airbags as we do with wood pulp.

It took us three days to load. It could have been faster but they work from 8-16… it is okay, I do not mind.

It gave me time to quickly go to town a couple of times and get fresh air. Till I still can. Indeed, it has been announced that France will enter her second full lockdown; so when I will fly home, I will not be able to go around like I thought I would… it is okay. But I like shops too haha 😆.

Saturday evening I saw a witch 🧙🏻‍♀️ fly by while we were at sea… the next morning our crew mess had a spooky look: skeleton, rats, bats, spider nets…. 👻 🎃

If you like it or not, the Franse Heks (me) always likes a good reason for a special decoration!

We are heading to Inkoo, 🇫🇮, almost near Kotka where we were just coming from 🙂 kieler channel again and 4 days sailing. It will be nice.

I am soon at the end of my term, in a couple of days I go home, so this is most probably the last story for this second term… I hope you still enjoy reading my stories. Please let me know in comments below what you think!Time flies!

See you next term! Xxx Sophie 😘 ♥️