Imagine going on a sailing trip. Perhaps the same images will come up in your mind as they did in ours: Lying on deck in the sun and getting a good tan, sailing through wind and weathers, driving manouevers in the middle of a rainy and stormy night –just you and the rough ocean. But, also seeing people puke over the railing like hell.
And all this more or less really happened during our first 24 hours on board. Let’s leave out the sunny part of the story and focus on the rough and stormy night. While the midnight to 4 am watch was up on deck fighting against wind and rain, we were lying fast asleep in our cabins until shouting and knocking woke us up: ALL HANDS ON DECK!
It seems as if people chose three options to react to this call: (1) Stay in your cabin puking. (2) Get up as fast as you can, put on your rain gear and do everything you can to be the first person on deck. (3) Get up as fast as possible, still be half asleep, forget to put some warm clothes on, stay in your pyjamas and nevertheless be among one of the last persons on deck.
If you chose option two or three some of the images mentioned above did come true, while others didn’t: Yes, it was indeed rainy and stormy, the waves felt huge, Lovis was leaning heavily towards portside, the sea was incredibly loud, we had our hats pulled deep down in our faces in order to protect ourselves from the rain and we could hardly recognise who was standing next to us. On the other hand, there were no people puking over the railing, since they didn’t even manage to get up but vomited in their cabins or in the salon instead (option 1). And second – but most important of all: you were on deck trying to really give a hand, full of motivation, but you had absolutely no idea what to do and how to do it. You could hear members of the Lovis crew shouting: BRING DOWN THE GAFF! But what the fuck is the gaff again? The next thing that happened was that some member of the crew handed the rope to you and you just pulled it. One-two-hep, one-two-hep, one-two-hep. So, this was the first brave and helpless moment in our sailor’s lives.
1 ½ hours later everything was over: we managed to bring the vessel into the harbour safely and were back in our cabins dreaming of more big sailing adventures.