First storm and anchoring near to Brixham

The night of the 28th October was difficult for most of us. The watch and mess stewards had some difficulties, but in the early morning of the 29th October, we finally arrived near to Brixham.

My watch, watch 3, already had huge waves and a lot of wind during our watch between 5 and 8 pm. Therefor the helmsman and the two lookouts had problems to stay at their positions, so later in the evening we even had to wear our safety harness, because the head of watch was afraid, we could fall over board. In spite of the difficulties, the waves were beautiful in the light of the sunset.

At the end of our watch the schooner sail had been ripped by the storm and we all tried to help to lower it. The established crew arrived really quickly, so we did our best to help them, because obviously they know much more than we do. By 8 pm the waves were enormous and one reached me: I was trying to coil a rope up when the wave came over me. Luckily my sailing clothes are very waterproof, so I didn’t get wet at all. It was already late, dark and cold -we just wanted to sleep. We were a little bit afraid and shocked by the force of the wind. By 9:30 pm I finally went to bed and tried to sleep, but the waves were too big and I wasn’t able to sleep. We rolled from one side of the bed to the other and it was noisy, because everything fell and moved all over the place, even though we had stored everything before the storm. In my cabin nobody could sleep, so we talked for hours and hours. But at some point, we fell asleep, because we were too tired to talk any longer. Unfortunately, it was not a peaceful sleep. By 3 o’clock in the morning we anchored near to Brixham and the ships´ movements calmed down. Even though we had stayed so long awake last night, we were not allowed to sleep long, because we had to do anchor watch. So, someone came to my bunk at 4:30 to wake me up. I didn’t want to stand up, but the sunrise was a good reason to go out. For the first time we saw Brixham, a little town, built on a hill, with a forest nearby. It looked nice and cosy in the light of the rising sun, covered with some fog.

This morning we talked a lot about the night: nearly nobody had been able to sleep. The mess stewards even had had to use their safety harness to not fall around in the galley. Nothing had stayed in its place. Thus, it had been very difficult to clean up. Some things had even fallen on the floor. I hadn’t been there, because I had helped to lower the ripped schooner sail, but I saw the things in my cabin falling around and I can imagine the chaos they had had to deal with in the galley.

We were all happy to have finally arrived in Brixham and to have a break from the seasickness. Even if we all enjoy life on board, it would be nice to be on land again.

The next days were used to fix the schooner sail, relax a bit and do things, we hadn’t enough time for during the last days: our workshops, for example music, creative writing, photography, etc. and we listened to the first presentations. In the evening the crew went to Brixham to bring fish and chips for all of us. We enjoyed this traditional British food.

On Sunday, we were divided in two groups and had the opportunity to visit Brixham. We got our cell phones to talk to our parents. That was great!! Later we walked to Brixham and wanted to buy some souvenirs, but we didn’t have pounds. Luckily, we found some gentle people, who changed euros to pounds. After dinner we came together in the messroom to play some games. In the afternoon of the 1st November we left Brixham, excited what will happen in the future.