Set course for Malta!

September 26, 2012 – October 01, 2012

Malta? Yes, you read right.

The plan was to leave Rhodes on September 23^rd. As seems to be the theme of this trip so far, that did not happen. Since the refit was only just completed, almost everything on the ship is brand new, including the galley (kitchen). It wasn’t long before we ran into problems and had to get the oven fixed. This wasn’t able to be done until after our planned departure date, and to add to that, the amazing maritime crew that we have aboard the ship has been working so hard trying to get things ready for us that the captain decided that a couple of extra days to rest up would be a good idea for everyone.

Since we still needed to stay on schedule, we set course for Valletta, Malta a few days later, rather than Dubrovnik, Croatia which would have taken a couple of days longer.

Departure day!

Finally, the real departure day came and we began life at sea. A typical day on the ship begins with a 7am wake-up, though you have 2 hours of night watch every night we are at sea (if we are in port, only two people from each watch group need to be up to watch the gangway). Breakfast is then served at 7:25 and at 7:45. It is only on one side of the banjer though, and since there are so many people we eat in two sittings. The meals are cooked by Jess, our awesome cook, and Cedar, the cooks mate. Preparation and clean-up are done by the students. We get put into galley (kitchen) groups, and each group works a full day. There are eight groups, so it is done on an eight day rotation. Galley is lots of work, serving and cleaning up after 80 people, but I really like it! Since you eat after everyone else, you get to eat as much as you want. You also don’t have to do night watch that night, or day watch that day!

After breakfast, we have colours. Colours is when we raise the flags (the ship’s “colours”) and we go over the announcements for the day. After colours we have what we call “Happy Hour”, which is where we clean the ship. Each watch has a designated cleaning station, and some watches have to do their cleaning during night watch. My watch is currently cleaning the laundry room, which we do during the night, so during Happy Hour we just stay on the main deck in case any extra hands are needed. The other cleaning stations are the banjer (which is done by two watches), the deck, and the showers/heads (yes, we clean the bathrooms). Happy hour ends at 9am when classes and day watch starts. Everybody has at most 3 classes a semester, plus Sociology of Community class and Maritime Studies which are mandatory. The classes are on a 5 day rotation, with Community only twice and Maritime Studies for one morning. The other classes we have every day for one hour, and a two-hour block of each class per 5 day schedule. Along with classes, you have 2 hours of day watch each day. All this goes from 9:00am-8:00pm, though classes all end by 7pm. In that time there is also lunch and a snack break. Supper begins at 6:30pm. The schedules are all really different than what I am used to because every needs to be able to take the classes they need/want to take. I have never had class until 6pm before!

After supper, galley cleans up until about 8:30pm and everyone else gets to do homework, watch movies, or do whatever you want. Once galley ends, there are often club meetings and such. Lights out is then at 10pm (though you can stay up as late as you want) and night watch has already begun again.

During night watch, four people go to physical positions while the rest (my watch has 8 people) clean and do whatever else needs to be done. The physical positions are Safety Round (you ring the bell at every half hour and do a safety round of the ship), Standby (you help out helm if needed, if not you just stand around), Helm (you get to steer the ship!) and Lookout (you ring a bell if you see anything on the water to let the Officer on watch know). There is always an officer on watch who you report to and who gives the course for helm to steer. On night watch you are only on each physical station for half an hour, and then you rotate to the next one (versus day watch where you do the same position for the full hour). The first few nights of watch were pretty hard and I was really tired after being up from 4am-6am, and you only get less than an hour of sleep after watch. The thing I really like about night watch though is the stars; I have never seen so many stars before! My second night on watch, I saw six shooting stars – it was incredible!

I’m sure some of you are probably thinking that I’m crazy for signing up for something like this; for lack of sleep, being up for two hours in the middle of the night, only 3 pushes of the shower button per day, sleeping in a room with 50 other students. No, things are not always easy and not all moments are great, but the moments and experiences that are great are well worth it all.

The way I describe ship life makes it sound so busy and a little chaotic most of the time and that is because it is. We do have lots of fun though too! On September 28^th we had our very first swim call of the year! We were just off the coast of Greece and got to jump off of the main deck into the surprisingly warm water below. It was a hot day and everyone was feeling a little stressed, so nothing could have been better than a swim in the Mediterranean Sea.

Swim call!

The sea was really calm. Scary calm, ever since we left Rhodes. You know when the surface is so smooth and there are no waves, just little ripples? It was like that for days. Then, on the 29^th, things changed. It technically wasn’t really rough, but no one was used to the motion so seasickness struck a few of us (yes, me included). Hopefully though, first to get it will mean first to get over it!

The weather got better though and the day got better too. I was down in the banjer when someone came down saying that there were dolphins. A group of us hurried up onto the foc’sle where we saw bottlenose dolphins swimming along the bow! Then, two whales were sighted! We think they were Sperm whales, which are quite rare to see; it was an amazing moment to end the day.

On October 1^st, after 5 days at sea, we came alongside in Valletta, Malta!

Note: Even though I cannot update this blog as much as I would like, the Sorlandet has a cool tracking system that can give you more frequent updates on the ship’s location. As part of the Class Afloat website, they have a Yellowbrick tracking page that you can check out at http://www.classafloat.com/track

Also: I just added photos to my post about Rhodes as well :)