Somewhere north of Scotland

Most of our parents were probably very surprised as they looked on Vesselfinder a few days ago. The Thor suddenly changed course to north and went completely in the wrong direction with record breaking speed and no intent of stopping. What first seemed like a bad April Fool’s Joke, was a precisely calculated, debated and a challenging plan, that would entirely change the end of this journey.

It all started on a misty morning in the northern Atlantic Ocean, approximately 400 nm off the English Channel. Like every day, new weather charts and forecasts were received via radio and studied by Detlef, Ruth, Josh and everyone interested, of course, including me. It quickly became evident that what they indicated was bad. Very bad. The high-pressure system that we tried to run away from since the Azores overtook us, headed east-northeast and stopped directly above England. This meant headwind, which isn’t exactly what you want if you’re on a sailing ship. So, we had no choice but to haul away on our downhauls and start our trusty engine, nicknamed “Olga”. However, the wind got stronger, and the waves did too, so despite her best efforts, we were only running about 1.5 – 2 kts, which was far too slow. The situation got even worse as there was doubt if we could even reach European mainland because we were consuming too much fuel. Furthermore, it would have been very difficult to nearly impossible to go through the channel, since, in addition to the wind, we would have also had to overcome counter currents, and Olga simply wasn’t up for the task.

But what else should we do? With the help of a few students, Josh calculated an alternative route, which would lead us around the west coast of Ireland, then through the sea of the Hebrides up to the Orkney and Shetland islands, from where we would turn east all the way through the Skagerrak and finally through the Baltic Sea to this pier from which we left six months ago. This recommendation was first discussed in a crew meeting and was eventually agreed to. When this change of plans was presented in a ship’s meeting, everybody screamed enthusiastically, because we would go somewhere completely new. We would actually be the first KUS-generation that did a true round trip, since we never have been at the same place twice. But a few students including me had the opinion that this decision should be taken with a grain of salt, since we had to travel more than a 500 nm further than originally planned and if the high-pressure zone would wander north with us, we´d have the same problem, just at a worse position, which would even endanger our on-time arrival in Kiel.

Nevertheless, the decision was made, and we would have to bear its consequences, both positive and negative. Immediately after changing course, we could set our sails and, with almost 7 kts, we went even faster than predicted, which of course lifted the mood of everyone aboard. But our fuel supplies weren’t magically growing of course, so we steered towards Killybegs, a small fishing town in Ireland, close to the border of Northern Ireland. There we had half a day off, so we could go ashore and explore a little, while the crew read through our applications for the third ship´s handover, that we had written – in English of course – over the last few days. On Monday morning, after the diesel tanks had been filled to the brim, the positions for the handover were announced, and we left our probably last stop already under new management. With bright sunshine, no wind and absolutely even water we cruised along the beautiful rocky coast. The next day we reached the sea of the Hebrides, and we could even see the islands and Scotland at the same time. But the landscape wasn’t the only spectacular thing, since we encountered seals, dozens of puffins and whales, even including orcas. In fact, I am currently writing this blog entry after returning from a dwarf-whale sighting. The days are also getting sensibly longer, but also much colder, as we’re heading north. Although we’ve got a tight schedule and thus sadly can’t go ashore, we still experienced a bit of the Irish and Scottish culture because our music-project sang traditional songs and Rahel told us about some myths and legends, for example about the selkies.

The further we went, the more doubts about this decision vanish. We are currently still ahead of schedule and the new weather charts are looking very promising, so much so, that we might even turn off our engine once we passed Cape Wrath, the northwesternmost point of Scotland. The mood is as good as it can be, although everyone knows about the ending of this journey, which sadly is closer than ever.