Sea, Anchoring & Porto

                                             20-11-2016 / 26-11-2016            BRIXTON / PORTO

20-11.

I did not expect any nice weather, but this?! We are in Brixton (England), anchored, to hide from the insane winds that are running through the English Channel right now. The waves out there were pretty big, and the wind reached up to 55 knots. This had as a result that I was quite seasick for a couple of days before getting here. Tomorrow we continue again on our way to Porto.

21-11.

We anchored again for the night, this time in Torquay (England). The wind is raging again outside of our hideout. Tomorrow we will continue again towards Porto. According to the weather forecasts the winds will be in our favor up to right outside the harbor of Porto: Leixões.

When departing from IJmuiden we entered seawatches. There are three watches: red, white and blue, the colors of the Dutch flag. These watches are all on watch for a total of 8 hours, in 2 shifts. Being red watch, this means that I get up at 00:00, and work until 04:00. Then I get up again at 12:00, and am on watch until 16:00. White watch takes 04:00-08:00, and 16:00-20:00, and Blue watch takes 08:00-12:00 and 20:00. Also, each watch has 4 maintenance hours every day. Red watch has these from 16:00-20:00. This means that I work 12 hours per day, and technically also have 12 hours of rest, but I have noticed that that is not really the case. Every time you have to go on watch you get woken up 20 minutes before, or 20 minutes before your meal (lunch at 11:30 for red watch). Also eating itself takes time, which is also in your free time (with some exceptions), so you lose at least 2 hours on that. Then you also have to go to bed after watch: brush your teeth, take a shower, take out your laundry, undress etc. Of course this sounds like easy stuff, and it is, but it also takes time off your sleeping time. After this I have about 9 hours left, which I could spend sleeping, but I also want to relax a bit, play a game with my mates, or watch a movie every now and then. All in all this makes me very tired when traveling in seawatches. My colleagues say I just have to get used to the rhythm, so I hope I will.

23-11.

We are halfway across the Biscay already. The winds are really favorable, which means that the ship just plows through the waves with an average of above 10 knots (18.5km/h), which is quite fast for a tall ship. It looks like we will need to anchor up in front of Porto, because we cannot enter the port before the designated time. We are simply too early, too fast!

26-11.

We arrived in Porto! After anchoring for one day, we went into the harbor and moored the ship alongside. I have never been to Portugal before, so this will be nice! Tonight the crew is going out into town, for a ‘couple’ of drinks. After having been at sea for a while, apparently these sailors usually paint the town red…