Day and night, on deck there’s light – watches on board

As we saw the Thor Heyerdahl for the first time, some weeks ago at the wharf in Kiel, many of us felt a great admiration for such a magnificent and complex ship. We couldn’t imagine to know the names and purposes of all those ropes and sails. Now, three weeks later, we are a couple of small seamen thanks to our ambitious watchleaders.

With this blog entry I want to give you an insight into our watch life at sea:
Our new home needs to be guarded at every time of the day, not only while sailing, but also when we are in a port. This is why we have four different watches – each of them with approximately ten members and their own schedule. Moreover, every sail on board is allocated to one of the watches for maneuvers. I’m currently part of watch 2 which is in charge from 2 am until 5 am and from 2 pm until 5 pm and our current sails are the schooner, the topsail (that’s the middle square sail) and the main topmast stay sail. When you are on watch there are many exciting tasks to do: Some of us have to check the engine and the safety on and below deck, one person stands at the helm, another records the current position and weather conditions and two people look out for ships, animals or other things in the water. Sometimes there are also special tasks like setting or dousing sails. The watchleader coordinates the team for these different duties and it is very important that you follow the orders of your superior without complaints. Especially during maneuvers the orders may sound a bit harsh sometimes, but nevertheless, you have an open-minded relationship with your watchleader and copis and the mood on board is cheerful. Every student must be junior watchleader once in a while and – with the help of the real watchleader – do his/her tasks.

Every person is part of a different watch in different stages of our trip and each sentry time has its own advantages. My watch is well-known for its incredible night sky. I personally love to look out for ships and to roam my gaze round the endlessness of the water. It is a wonderful feeling to see all those natural phenomena like shooting stars or bioluminescence in the water at night and to let the creativity cross your thoughts. Often, I have my notebook with me to write down my ideas. Another big advantage of watch 2 is that after our night watch we can sleep until 9 am. During the watches we often have interesting conversations with the other members of our watch or we are concentrated on our duties. Lately it became a new tradition that when we change the watch, each watch group, instead of only giving the following watch the important information they have to know, recites a self-written poem or rap containing the important information. But before this happens the members of the next watch group have to be woken up. The waking up is a holy tradition on board because it effects your mood for the first hours of the day. It is extremely important for the person who wakes the others up to tell them information like the current weather conditions and the exact time and also try to give them a soft waking. Most of the tasks like being helmsman are a lot of fun for almost all of us but there are still some preferences, of course. The heavy swell during the engine round presents a great challenge for many of us because you have to fight against terrible seasickness. Personally, I enjoy the round a lot because it is soft and warm in the engine room. I think to record our current position is very interesting, too, because you can see where we currently are.

In addition to the daily watches our watchleader gives us nautical lessons almost every day so that one day we can sail the vessel by ourselves. In the middle of the second stage the students have to be able to take over the sailboat. We can keep on studying on our own with a small blue book, “the Thor Bible”, in which we can read the most important information about the ship and sailing knowledge. The sailboat’s library is also full of helpful reading matter about all the things you need to know.

On top of the watches and the nautical lessons we have to clean a certain part of the ship, e.g. the deck or the messroom, together with our watch every day because it is so much nicer and safer to live on a tidy and clean ship. A good hygiene is fundamental for the health and mood of our crew.

You can generalize that you know your watch very well since you spend a lot of time together. You learn to work in a team because you cannot sail a big vessel like this by yourself. Oftentimes during our meetings before or after our watch we also play games in our groups so we learn things about each other and have fun together.

It is hard to get up in the middle of the night and sometimes the watch can be pretty hard as well as tiring, but you learn to stick out things to the end and it toughens you up. I really think that all those experiences will be beneficial for my whole life and I do enjoy every moment in the group because I learn a lot and we also have a lot of fun together.