Thinking

Imagine you are standing one night behind the rudder on the end of a fifty-meters-ship which you are driving alone in this moment. You are starring alternately on the big illuminated compass in front of you and on the dark horizon. The transition between ocean and sky is difficult to see in the blackness of the night, but you can orientate yourself on some stars which are maybe standing in a certain position to the numerous sails of your ship. If these stars are wandering too far away from the point where they were standing the whole time before, you can look a little bit down to the small, black needle on the round white ground from the compass and check the direction where we are driving to. If this needle turns too wide to the right side you have to steer a little bit more to portside and if the ship begins to turn too much to the left you have to regulate the rudder a little bit more to the right side named starboard.

And slowly you are coming into a routine during you are looking to find the optimal position of the rudder where the construction you are driving would deviate as few as possible from the course. Quite safe you will stand the next half hour behind this rudder and after about 10 minutes, when the routine is catching you, you will maybe have a short time, time for yourself. Perhaps you have time to think. To think about everything what is happening in your life right now.

Thinking is something for what you have extreme sparsely time on this journey. And even you have the feeling the days here are longer and you can do and experience so much more on one single day than you could ever do and experience at one day at home, you still don’t get to manage it to think enough about everything. But especially because you do and experience so much at every day it is so important you can think about everything and process it. And that’s the reason why I try to use this half hour every time. To think. To think maybe about the fact that we are crossing the Atlantic currently which is during nearly 3 weeks. That we drive this ship every day alone over an endless blue ocean. That we learn for school in a completely different way as at home, because we don’t only learn for school. We also learn for example traditional navigation, how to work together with the phenomenon wind and water and naturally most of all how to sail this whole complexity construction of a sailing ship. We know in the meantime all about the sails and ropes what we can know and as you see with that knowledge we can manage it to come in a short time on the other side of the Atlantic. With that knowledge we could manage it to sail in the last three months from Kiel in Germany to the Canaries and the Cap Verdes and all that based on a solicitation that we sent before one year and which was the first step into a series of acts. Acts and happenings that changed our life and which gave you so much to think about. So much you can think about in this short time right now while you are standing behind the rudder.

You are starring forward on the horizon in the night, maybe noticing something have varied, looking at the compass, correcting your optimal position of the rudder a little bit and looking forward again…

But then the time is over. The half hour of heading ends and another person comes to the place where you had stand for 30 minutes and offers you to undertake the rudder. To his information you tell him the course which the ship should drive at the moment to come to his target in the Caribbean. Then you say him the momentary more or less optimal position of the rudder that helps him maybe to hold this course and makes him more responsible for the task to bring us nearer to the end of the third and up to the longest time on sea, but also nearer to the beginning of a new time on land. A time on Dominica which is one of the greenest Islands of the Caribbean, where we will make a three days hiking tour between rivers, waterfalls and jungle and where we want to rebuild a complete house to help an 11-headed family which lives since 2017 after the incredible huge Hurricane Maria under plastic sheets. There is so much you can think about. About the future. How this time will be and what you will do and experience.

But the time behind the rudder is over and your thoughts break up.