Watch Duty

Date: 23.10.2026

Since we are living on the Thor Heyerdahl our lives have changed a lot. One thing that is really new for us is the watch duty.
Because we are a traditional sailing ship, we don´t have an autopilot and have to have a 24/7 watch system, in order to ensure the safety of the ship and the crew. There are four different watches and in each one there are eight to nine students and three people from the crew. A normal watch day is six hours long, split into three hours at day- and nighttime, so we are covering total of 24 hours. I´m currently in watch one, so my times are from 11pm/am-2am/pm.
During this time there´s usually the whole watch on the quarter deck doing tasks such as being the helmsman or the lookout. Being the helmsman requires you to be quite concentrated especially when there´s lots of waves, since the waves can push the ship into different directions. Another task is the safety and -if running- the main engine round. These are done every hour and we´re, for example, checking the ship for leaks and secure lose items. For sailing, the weather is one of the biggest parts and that´s why we are tracking it every hour, measuring the water and air temperature, the atmospheric pressure and the wind’s direction and strength. This is one of my favorite tasks.

If we´re sailing for several days or heading into a harbor there might be some extra tasks like dousing/setting the sails or preparing the anchor.
Each one of the four watch times has different advantages and disadvantages. In watch three (five to eight) for example you can see the sunrise and sunset, but you need to wake up really early. During the whole journey we can experience every one of the watches for one term each.
But we´re not just doing the watches. Another thing we´re doing in the watch groups is cleaning the ship. There are different areas that need to be cleaned every day, for example the messroom. There, you need to wipe the floor and the walls and vacuum the salon.

Especially during the first weeks on board we need to learn lots of sailing theory. We are mostly learning by doing but there are also nautical lessons given by our watchleader, where we´re getting lots of information about the ship, all the different sails and how to use them correctly.
In the last few days our watch system changed a little bit, because we were in a harbor. The harbor watch only requires two students that are responsible for the safety rounds and letting people on and off board. Harbor watch also includes checking all the lines that keep the ship in place. This is extremely important, particularly in stormy weather conditions.