So I remembered that I was supposed to write to people telling you guys what’s going on, so I guess I have a lot of catching up to do. I took an uneventful plane ride to London Gatwick. During the layover in NYC I caught up with four other crew members for the plane ride over.
When we arrived to the Amistad in Falmouth UK we had about two weeks with the old crew and the new crew. The idea was the program and boat could be handed over, rather than it simply being a ghost ship for an hour then taken over by a 100% fresh crew. It was a neat experience, and ended up being really really easy because we had so many competent sailors on board for the first two weeks. But even then, I got tired of the same old crew so the arrival of the students in Liverpool and the departure of the old crew was a welcome change. I love having the young-ins around so I can teach stuff to them, and suck their interested energy into my own work.
So we have nine crew members and six students who all stand watch. We also have a cook, captain and engineer. So a word about this “watch system”. I didn’t really know what to expect because I’ve never been in an official watch in the watch system. So how this works is that Amistad runs on a three watch, Swedish style dogged schedule. A day consists of two 12 hour blocks. The day block is 7AM to 7PM (0700-1900) and is divided into two six hour watches. The night block is three watches from 1900-2300, 2300-0300, 0300-0700. The three watches go one after another around and around. If you play it out, once every three days you get the two day watches off where you can really sleep, read in, write a letter, or do that project you’ve been dying to do. It’s a neat system, and although I do think it’s a little tiring to be in all the time, it’s great to be awake or asleep at weird hours of the day and also wonderful to be working with two other teams to keep Amistad underway and on course 24 hours a day in definitely.
Since the beginning of the trip, we’ve been in Falmouth, Liverpool and now Bristol UK. It’s been cool being at all these different ports and really going places. I’ve become pretty good friends with some of the crew members on board, specifically the engineer named Barry. He and I like to talk about technical stuff and the finer points of pretty much anything. My other good friend Ella is on a different watch than me so we don’t get to hang out too much as usually when I’m on, she’s off and vica versa. But regardless, it’s nice to be around friends onboard.
There are still many ports in our future, and a yard period when we get to spend some time in Portugal. I’m really looking forward to that one… I can go find a little coffee shop to hang out in on my days off and other than that, simply enjoy a nice routine scrape sand paint and varnish. Just like old times this past winter.
I will send another note later on to all of you, until then, adios, Drew