Come Sail Away, come sail away, come sail away with meeeee

Now is the time for some explanation about this ship life I call my reality…

At this moment, and all of the moments in the 24 hour period, there are four students doing physical watch. That means 4 stations: fire watch, lookout, helm and standby.

Fire watch:

o Every half an hour, this student does a walk-through of the ship to see, smell, or feel a fire. They need to pay close attention to the engine room, the paint lockers and the warming closet.

o They also check in with the lookout person and those who are in the galley to see that those people are safe and not wounded

o They are also in charge of keeping ship time. Every half hour during the sail, day and night, there is a bell that tells everyone onboard the time. Starting at 0800 there are 8 bells. At 0830 there is 1. At 0900 – 2, 0930 -3, 1000 – 4, all the way up to noon where there is 8 again. And the cycle repeats…

Lookout:

o As the title implies, they lookout.

o They are stationed at the bow of the ship (unless the weather is so bad that being at the bow endangers them (which happens more often than not)).

o They look out for buoys, boats, land, debris and if they see anything they ring the bow bell:

1. One ring for starboard

2. Two for port

3. Three for straight ahead (ice berg straight ahead) – how many people heard that in their head when they read that?)

o Then, the fire watch, who is standing on the quarter deck (aka Aft deck) replies by ringing the same number of rings on the aft bell. This notifies that the firewatch sees what the lookout sees. Then they fire watch notifies the Officer on watch of the object, and the Officer decides to alter course or not. Then the Officer notifies the helm of the new course, if there is one.

Helm

o This student steers the ship

o Sorlandet is a manual rudder with a large wheel.

o The student on this job is given a course on a 360 degree range and they ensure that we stay on it:

1. Turn to Port the degrees go smaller

2. Turn to Starboard the degrees go bigger

Standby

o This person is the Helm’s ‘right hand man’

o They are also the lookout for the back of the ship – in case of a Man Overboard situation

o This is very important in rough weather

There’s the quick and dirty of how this ship works on a daily basis…

It’s a crazy life!!

On this big, blue, watery road we have about 200 feet of space, shared by over 70 people. Every morning at 0800 we have what we call “Colours” – we all muster on deck, do a watch count (to make sure that no one fell overboard overnight), we raise the flags (Norwegian and Canadian) and give daily announcements like the weather forecast, how far we’ve traveled in the last 24 hours, what the plan for the day is, what clubs are meeting tonight… etc. So, this morning, we’re in “Colours” and someone interrupts and says “WHALES!” Other time’s it’s been “DOLPHINS!” or “FLYING FISH” or “SUNFISH”… We’ll be eating breakfast and someone will say “WHALES!”. Classes will be on the go and suddenly we’ll be interrupted with “We’re sailing past the cliffs of Dover, COME SEE!” or “I can see AFRICA AND SPAIN!! Come see!!”… Can you imagine?? And then everyone buckles down again to their math lesson.

It’s a crazy life!

the sailor's life, for me...