On the Nightwatch

Posted by Lisa at 8:41 AM, June 22, 2005

© Greenpeace

Andrew, another web editor, arrived yesterday and is staying on the ship for the continuation of the climate campaign work in Greenland. It was really cool to meet him since I'd read many of his Greenpeace weblogs before. Some of the crew that were here when I got on have left now and new crew have boarded the ship including the two Phil's who I remember from the Pacific Fisheries web logs a while back. When you meet people you have read a lot about for the first time it feels like you are meeting celebrities. I knew that Phil 1 (the bosun) had caught a tuna in the Pacific on a rod and line and that Phil 2 had resuscitated a small child on one of the pacific islands and yet they knew absolutely nothing about me. Being a Greenpeace cyberactivist prior to coming on a Greenpeace ship has made me feel like a teenage kid who just made it backstage after a concert and is now hanging out with their favorite band. The only difference is that I probably wouldn't have to clean the toilets backstage at a U2 concert...

Andrew took me to a restaurant this evening so we could get free wireless access to the internet, but it was under the condition that we purchased a beer. I couldn't think of a better condition! I loved sitting in this funky little Icelandic place drinking Viking beer (which is REALLY good by the way), checking up on the comments here and reading about what's been happening at the IWC meeting in Korea. We worked on our laptops for hours until some Icelandic men began to heckle us from another table saying things like "hey you Greenpeace!", "we love to eat whales!", "we even eat it raw!". I turned around and politely informed them that whale meat was highly contaminated with mercury (true!!) and left it at that. Andrew ended up talking to them about climate change and whaling until 2am but I had to do the 12-4am watch on the ship so I left him at the restaurant and walked down to the docks.

At night here, it is actually really cold, like winter in the UK. Tonight there was no wind in the air at all when I walked onto the ship and started my rounds. The harbour was completely calm and silent and the sun was just starting to set. It would have been a perfect night to spend entirely outside if it weren't for the incredibly nippy temperature and the fishy smell around the ship. I spent my watch mainly up on the bridge on the computer and listening to Crowded House on the stereo. Every once in a while I went outside to make sure that nobody was walking up the ladder from the dock and every hour I went around the entire ship to make sure that nothing was on fire or leaking or suffering from some kind of breakdown. It was an easy watch since many of the crew were up either playing darts in the hold until about 2:30am or sitting chatting in the mess.

Once everyone was asleep, I realised I was responsible for the ENTIRE ship, which was a little scary but pretty cool to be given such an honourable duty, to look after our little floating kibbutz while everyone else slept.

I thought I would get lonely and sleepy doing the watch but it went by really fast and I liked it so much that when it was time for the next person to take over I decided to stay up and work rather than go to bed straight away. Just as well I planned to stay up since Andrew who was taking over from me did not get out of bed when I came to his cabin to get him but instead fell back to sleep and I had to go down and wake him up again twenty minutes later.

When it's so light outside all the time, it's quite easy to stay up all night. I had to force myself to go to bed at 5:30am. I'm only on here for a short time and I don't want to waste it by sleeping too much.

L.