From rituals, insiders and running gags

Rituals are an essential part of our live on board a traditional sailing vessel. Most of them have a long history in seafaring or help us structure our often very adventurous daily life, for example the so called “Silent Minute“ before every meal, which is started and finished by someone ringing a hand bell. This short period without any distraction from talking to other people gives us the chance to calm down and let the happenings of the day sink in.

Another ritual we do to take a break from the sometimes busy life on board is the so called “Besan-Schot-An”-ceremony every Saturday afternoon after an especially intense round of cleaning the ship. When all the work is done, we gather on the quater deck, auction the items that have been collected in our “Lost-and-found”-box and celebrate the week with a nice drink and cultural presentations like songs, short stories, or poems.
The next morning, we are always granted a Sunday breakfast with specials like chocolate cream, peanut butter as well as eggs, French toast, or pancakes. And what is better than one delicious breakfast a week? Right, two delicious breakfasts a week! That is why the Thursday on sea is celebrated as “Sailors Sunday” where we are also treated with specialties to start our day before some of us have classes – or before others need to go to the quater deck to start their watch with the official handover. This is also kind of a ritual because every single time, the new watch meets the old one at the bottom of the mizzen mast to get all the necessary information about wind, weather, course, and sails. This process is finished by the old watch wishing the new one a good watch duty in traditional Low German. To answer, the watch that takes over wishes the others a good rest period.
Finally, the most obvious ritual has to be our ship horn, the typhoon, which is used for a four-to-six-second-long signal exactly at 12:00 p.m. every day on sea. All these rituals help us to bring structure in the overwhelming life on board.

Besides that, we also have phrases, moves, and habits which are exclusively linked to our ship, the KUS-project, our journey or even our current watch. Most of these running gags are remarkable quotes. For example, a very annoyed: “This finally has to work now!” from our first captain Detlef has been used by the crew whenever something did not go as planned.
Yet there are also phrases which came from one person and spread quickly among the crew till they became part of our “Thor-Slang”. In the first half of the journey, the most common running gag was the very stereotypical very dry German answer to bad news: “Machste nix”, which could be translated with “Nothing you can do (about it)”. On board, this was the top comment when someone got a new annoying task or made an unnecessary mistake. Normally, it is answered with the similar phrase “Steckste nich drin” – “You’re not part of it”.
As time went on, this gag faded and was replaced by saying an object or person that annoyed you followed by a “grrrrrrr”-sound and a shaking your fist, for example: “Swell, grrrrrrr!” whenever something slid from the table because of a big wave.
At least, the biggest kind of ritual or running gag on our journey is a system called “Nose-sentences” which some of us knew from home and works as follows: Every time someone says a sentence that is very funny without context, another person double-taps the person’s nose to “log in” this last spoken sentence. Afterwards, every time someone touches that person’s nose, they have to repeat their saved sentence in the exact volume and tone as the first time – until a new sentence is logged in. This has led to countless funny interactions, situations, and combinations and shaped the first half of our journey completely.

Besides, there were and are always little insiders and running gags in friend groups, watches or galley duties that come up, stay for a while and then fade again. In the end, they all make our daily social life way funnier, connect us more as a community, and will make us smile in a few years when we read about them in our yearbook and diaries.