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 :)

On the road to Rhodes

September 9, 2012 – September 26, 2012

September 9^th was a day of goodbyes. We met our families at the shipyard where the ship refit was taking place and got to tour the ship. I saw the Sorlandet a year and a half ago in Norway, but so much has changed since then! All of us students – and the teachers too – can’t wait to move in to our new home!

It was time to say goodbye to the ship for now though, but more importantly, time to say goodbye to our families. After many hugs, smiles, and tears, our busses drove off, leaving our families and the familiarity of our lives behind.

We drove along the coast until we reached Gallipoli. We had our very first port program there, visiting the area, which played a big role in the shaping of two nations, Turkey and Australia, during World War I. We went to memorials and museums, and then to a beautiful cove called Anzac Cove.

Beach in Gallipoli (lots of Class Afloat t-shirts!)

Gallipoli

ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Armed Corps, and the cove was where their forces landed. They had intended to land further up but hadn’t accounted for the currents and wind, so instead came to the cove where they faced a massive cliff. The Turkish troops, led by Mustafa Kamal, “father of modern Turkey”, were prepared and a battle ensued. Interestingly enough, Mustafa was shot during the battle, directly at his heart, but he was saved by his pocket watch. It is strange to think about how different Turkey’s future may have been if the events hadn’t occurred as they did. In all, it was a really interesting port program and one of the Class Afloat teachers is from Australia and knows a lot about Gallipoli so he had lots of stories to tell. We returned to the hotel that night for a games night. We always seem to have lots of activities going on and I am sure that this is going to be a busy year! We started classes on the 11^th and I began to fully realize that I really am gone from home. At first, it felt as though we were just on a holiday, but now that school has started, I can imagine classes going on back at home while I am here, so very far away.

We had a meeting that night, where we discussed all of the clubs we want to have (just when you thought things couldn’t get any busier!), such as spirit day, knitting, SCUBA/snorkel, baking, dance, holiday, birthday, and stargazing club, to list only some!

On September 13^th we had our second port program! We left in the morning for Troy (we also watched the movie a couple of nights later!) and in the afternoon we went to a Greek ruin called Pergamon. There was a theatre there that is one of the steepest in the world! We then drove to Izmir, Turkey, where we stay a few more days, which consisted of school, more school, and then a beach day!

Port program day!

Pergamon

One of the steepest theatres in the world

Pretty soon though, it finally came time to leave. On the 20^th of September we drove to Marmaris, Turkey, where we took the ferry to the island of Rhodes, Greece! When we arrived in Rhodes, we walked around the small bay and as we walked we could see the Sorlandet, our new home, growing ever nearer. After so many setbacks, date changes, and changes of plans, we had finally arrived at the ship where we would spend the next 8 months.

We got settled in on the ship and got assigned lockers and bunks. There are both hammocks and bunks but I got a bunk. It’s great now, but we’ll see how things are when the ship starts rocking! The area of the ship where all the students sleep is called the banjer. It is the main room of the ship where we eat and have classes as well. At night, curtains separate the girls’ side from the boys’ side. The benches where we sit at the tables have back rests that fold down flat, and then the whole thing lifts up to turn it into a bunk. We finally got to spend our first night aboard the Sorlandet!

I slept much better than I had expected that first night – and pretty much every night since – because we’re always so busy so I’m always tired! On the first full day on the ship we got a tour of the ship. There were three stations; the first station taught us how to do our cleaning jobs, which is where each watch cleans a certain section of the ship every morning. In the second station we learnt about emergency equipment on board and put on flotation devices and survival suits. One of the maritime crew said that after lots of practice we would be able to put the suits on in a minute or less. So, even though it was our first attempt, my friend Georgie and I timed each other, and we both did it in under a minute! The final station we got a tour of every part of the ship.

After all of the ship stuff was done for the day, we got shore leave! We went swimming at a beach in the harbour. We are on the Aegean Sea and the water is so blue! After swimming we went back to the ship to shower. Since we have limited water on the ship, the showers have a push button and you are only allowed to use 3 pushes a day. Each push only lasts about 30 seconds, so you have to be pretty quick! You are allowed to save up pushes though, so say you don’t shower one day, you can have 6 pushes the next day.

We left the ship again, this time going into the Old Town of Rhodes. The Old Town is surrounded by stone walls with turrets and a moat, so it looks sort of like a castle! Inside is a main square with shops and restaurants and such. We went out for supper at a restaurant on the rooftop where we could look out on Rhodes and the sea beyond.

Rhodes

The Old Town

That night (the morning of the 22^nd, if you want to be exact), I had gangway duty. Since I am in watch 5, we start with the 4am-6am night watch. It was pretty tough getting up in the middle of the night, but the people who are on the watch before you come and wake you up so there aren’t alarms going off throughout the entire night. I was on galley that day too, and you had to report at 6:45am so rather than going to bed after watch, I stood on the foc’sle (fore castle), the deck at the front of the ship, and watched the sun rise.

During the day, we went through emergency procedures. We had a fire drill, a man overboard drill, and an abandon ship drill. It was pretty impressive how quickly a group of 80 can get organized during these drills (haha it never seems to happen any other time!). That afternoon we had shore leave again and we walked along the walls of the Old Town before going back to the ship for supper. Galley duty is optional during shore leave so if you want supper you have to sign up, and then help out with the prep and clean-up. When supper was over, we went back out into town in search of internet (the typical in-port activity!) and then returned to the ship for the night. The next day, September 23^rd was scheduled as departure day!