The Closing of Circles

Yesterday we closed the big circle: we crossed our line from the first part of our journey. As every other sign of coming nearer to home, this came way too fast and surprisingly. The third ship-handover, being that close to European mainland, the plans for the Galley Duty that reach the 20th of April, the day of our return, all these things, clearly dated since the journey started, come way to fast, even when we are prepared for them. While the time flies by, we don’t even notice how the days that remain are running out of our hands.

To work against that, the nights get longer, but the days can’t shorten. Yesterday I heard someone say: “Once we’re home again there will be enough time to sleep” and I think that is the attitude of not just a few of us. We think much about what will be after all this, make plans, enjoy the time that is left and try to make the most out of it.

As if it were a sign, we saw the biggest dolphins of the whole journey today. A sign to enjoy, a sign to use the last days of our journey and do all the things we like doing here or we didn’t do jet. Although we talked much about it and have known it since our application for the project, most of us do not feel ready to leave all of this behind.

Besides the fact that we all look forward to seeing our families again, to having more space than a 50m x 6m ship, to having a bed that won’t move a centimetre while we sleep, or to cook for just a handful of people, going home and living life the “normal“ way feels somehow like ignoring all of this, this great adventure, ever happened. Just the fact that I will wake up and just have the five people of my family around me, that I will not be woken up by loud laughing coming out of the messroom or won’t be awakened at 1:30 am to steer a ship for three hours is so absurd that I can’t even imagine how my normal daily life routine will feel after KUS.

In either case it is clear that closing the circle for ourselves is going to be hard for all of us and it is good to know that our families are going to support us in every way possible. The KUS-journey will be over, but life will not, and in some ways – in some ways not even KUS. Because we are going to see each other again and have good times together again, even when it’s not all of us all together.