Thoughts about the Azores and our Journey
Today is Thursday, the 10th of March. Just a casual date for you guys, am I right? For us KUSis it’s not any date, it’s the day our journey to the Azores ends. In less than ten hours, the Azores are getting visible for our ship. But how much exactly happened to us getting to this point of our big journey? Let’s turn back into time to the sunny island Dominica, from where we started crossing the Atlantic. I gotta be honest, at this point I didn’t want to go away from Dominica; the Caribbean islands were my main target of the journey and one of my main reasons why I wanted to join KUS at all. Furthermore, I didn’t have any nerve for some stormy North Atlantic weather about which the grown ups were used to tell horror stories about. But all the stories about some journeys with 30 days rain only weren’t true at all; the first two weeks of the journey mostly were quite sunny, not as perfectly warm as the Caribbean Islands, but already quite warm. Everyone was quite happy, and I just loved the atmosphere flowing over with harmony and fun. Even though our captain told us every second day, that there will be storm and bad weather in the next days, the storm actually never appeared.
After two weeks of enjoying sunny warmth, the first actual cold breeze of storm arrived and pushed our sails with an incredible force forward. From one hour to the other the calm sea around us got angry, stormy and unbelievable majestic. Gigantic waves rolled over the ship with a frightening beauty and I can tell you, if you experience such a power just for one moment, you suddenly feel quite tiny and powerless. The storm started the same time as the ship handover, an event in which the pupils get full control of the whole ship for a few days. Unfortunately, the ship handover was way shorter than it actually should be, because according to the weather forecast the storm would get a lot worse than it was at this point and the crew couldn’t let us pupils take responsibility about such a dangerous situation. That was a little bit sad but understandable. After the ship handover there wasn’t much time left until we reached the Azores- and the time until then was the stormiest time we’ve ever had on that part of the journey. A few people got seasick, but in total everyone enjoyed the action we experienced with the big waves hitting our ship.
After all the time at sea suddenly a dark shadow appeared at the horizon and a few seconds after that, a loud scream came from the poopdeck: “Land in Sicht!” The enthusiasm at the crew didn’t have any borders. There was great joy everywhere in the pupils ’minds- but also some more worrying thoughts: The Azores are the last land excursion we have at this big, wonderful journey… after this time there will be only three weeks at sea and we’ll be home again. Actually, in my opinion this journey should be like half a year longer – the time I’m spending here is the best time of my entire life. So, I’m as happy as sad that we’re here at the Azores now, because I’m so happy I have the opportunity to visit and experience the culture and beauty of this island- and with that words I’m ending this blog.