Atlantic Crossing 2019/2020 – from the Blue Watch

“Before we start, we wanted to let you know that Renso is a “knower”. If you need anything, just give him a call!”

27^th of December

The first week of this trip has gone by pretty fast, even though we did a lot of stuff and saw a lot of things (like dolphins and whales). We’re all getting along with the weird rhythms and we’re now used to sleeping on the craziest times. After a week of spending time together, we’re really starting to get to know each other. We keep saying, it feels like we’ve known each other for years instead of 7 days. As the blue watch, or as the other watches would say: “the youngsters”, we’ve done the 04.00 till 08.00 watch during the first week. In a few days we’re switching to the 00.00-04.00 watch and to be honest… We’re going to miss Hein, his stories about stars and his knowledge in general.

At half past 3 we we’re woken up by the white watch and our day officially started. All the other night watches, we didn’t have a lot to do, but this time was different. After many nights of eating grilled cheese, we we’re finally able to convince the cooks that we we’re allowed to make pancakes, but they had one condition… Instead of making pancakes just for our night watch, we also had to make the pancakes for lunchtime. So around 04.00 we started making the batter and then around 06.30 we finally finished with the last pancake. Big shoutout to Danny and Gerard for letting us do this.

3 days ago, someone came with the genius idea to do some exercises, stretching and yoga. So after we finished the pancakes, we started our lovely morning routine. Starting off with some exercises for the abs, the legs and the arms, then some stretching and we ended with some yoga during sunset.

After we got some sleep, we went up for lunch and after we chilled on the deck till they started a man over board drill. While we we’re thinking we could just use Renso as a man over board, the crew didn’t agree and threw out a buoy. We named him Harry and for the concerned ones underneath all readers, Harry is safe!

We had our last watch of that day and after it we had a drink all together. We went to bed early, because the next day we we’re going to arrive at Cabo Verde.

28^th of December

Land in sight! When we woke up for our night watch, we could already see the lights from the first island. After we moored in Mindelo, we got off as quickly as we could to go sightseeing. We were hitting in the direction for the market. Some of us bought a map, but we couldn’t use it. At first we didn’t know where we were on the map and after we found it, we couldn’t find the market on the map. We managed to find the market and walked around looking at all the places and the people. We weren’t used to the way the locals tried to sell their products and the way the locals tried to get in physical contacts.

We all needed a drink to cool down, but instead of going to a touristic place, we found a local place. We tasted a local beer and after it we headed to the beach. The water was lovely and we really enjoyed our swim. It was pretty weird thinking about how we’re in the middle of winter and we’re swimming in the ocean. After chilling and getting sunburned on the beach we went for a bite to eat. It was funny because the servers didn’t know any English and when Bart and Renso ordered some ice cream, we saw it standing on the bar for more than 10 minutes before serving it. So by the time they got it, it was fully melted. All of us and the servers got an experience and a good laugh out of it. We headed back to the ship where we found Mike painting the Eendracht on the wall.

We all ate dinner together and after we left the harbor at 18.00, which meant we had watch for a couple of hours. It was the last time we saw land in 2019. Which includes that the next time we will step on land again will be next year. Fun fact: We all felt some land sickness during our day ashore.

See you in Saint Martain!

Love from the Blue Watch,

Veerle, Lotte, Amalie, Marjolein, Jikke, Bart, Thijs, Renso, Nico, Mathijs & Marco