Meanwhile it is business as usual onboard the ship. We live together 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from when we wake up in the morning until we go to sleep in the evening. Good thing we are such a nice bunch of people! You get to know each others little habits and peculiarities pretty quickly. You also learn to give each other space - some people should not be approached at all before nine o’clock.

Wake up call is normally at 7.30. Breakfast is followed by cleaning of all common areas, and then we go on to our chores; Bent, Max and Måns disappear into the dark mysterious place called the engine room, Natasha, Penny, Martha and Steve work on deck, our cook Daniel puts the pots and pans into good use in the galley, Sabine does her magic on the boat engines and one of the mates or captain Pete is always on the bridge.

Of course we can’t all just head for our bunks in the evening, someone has to navigate the ship, and somebody else is on watch. When you are on watch you do rounds every hour to make sure everything is ok on the ship, and that there are no technical failures or fires for example. This also means that somebody is always asleep, and we have to be a bit considerate and not talk or make too much noise in the alleyways. Sleeping during working hours can be hard enough when grinding and chipping rust is done on deck!

An additional routine on this particular trip is to make fun of my hair: “you’re like Leningrad Cowboys with their hair on the wrong way around” or “did you brush it with a hand grenade?”. Very funny, somebody give me a bloody hairbrush.

- Iréne