Tag: life at sea

Week 6.

Week 6.

Oh hello northern hemisphere again! Hello squalls, showers, north easterly winds and clouds! Bye bye stunsails!

Europa’s bridge at night

After a great equator crossing ceremony, we have been able to welcome quite a few new shellbacks on Europa. A swimcall sounded very necessary to rinse off some of the pollywogs crimes… but mainly the last bits of slob in the remaining hair… 😉

The grateful moment of enjoying the view of the ship you are sailing on… while she is sailing!

The last days of last week were pretty busy with maintenance but luckily we had the chance to launch one of the zodiacs and take turns on the ocean to view the vessel sailing away. This was as usual an awesome experience as it is not very often that one can see the vessel he is sailing on from a different perspective!

Bark Europa

A lot of maintenance is happening. I have been assigned the task to revarnish the board names of the vessel that are normally screwed on the stern of the vessel… quite some sanding, preping and layers of varnish to apply before they will be hung up again in Horta.

Bark Europa

Did you know the writting was made of real gold? I hope I will not mess it up! 😉 …

Week 5.

Week 5.

It has been a week since we left Ascension and it also just feels like a week.

Sailing closer towards the equator with changes in the weather system

Some days are longer and others flow by as, as something very strange when you are in swedish watch because you just go with the flow and your routine fits in a cycle of 2 days; in which you go 5 times to bed, and are woken up also 5 times, have 6 meals, 3 night snacks, 5 official coffee breaks on your watches, 2 out of your watch, and i will not tell you how many unofficial i have otherwise you will think constantly live in a coffee break…, and last but not least 2 beer times!

A happy watch dancing in the rain

It keeps you busy. And in between, you sleep, work, make voyage plannings, chart and book corrections, drills, safety checks on equipment, sail manoeuvers, assist with the network and digital equipment onboard for those who have problems connecting to the network, finding their usb, printing…., and if you have time you take some a bit for yourself…. and reading 2 pages of a book before falling asleep has been a huge challenge lately!

Heavy rain. Change of weather system. Neptune will soon visit.


But the sun is out-the tropical heat as well- and I have been looking forward to meeting Neptune and his court again… 😉

Week 4.

Week 4.

Ascension Island.

Short log update, not many opportunities to connect to wifi around here and a lot to do ashore in the very little free time.

Such a great sailing again, caught a few delicious fish and stunsails all the way. Almost no motoring which was great.

Ascension Island on the horizon, sailing with stunsails on Europa

The weather is very warm around 30 degrees celcius but I love it.

I enjoy very much being with captain Klaas in the watch again and back in ascension is always great.

Bonus with seeing green turtles laying eggs even though it is the end of season… easy week.

Turtle laying eggs on long beach, Ascension Island

Little challenges.

The next leg is 4 weeks to Horta! Fingers crossed! ⚓️ ♥️