Today is the birthday of Thomas (NL) and today is it also Irish day! The cook and cooks assistant Pat are getting up every morning really early (around 5 o' clock) to get everything ready for the day. The Irish trainees are making the lower mess really Irish with balloons and flags.
In the morning we had smoko with birthday-cake (chocolatecake!) and we sang in all the languages onboard again. Rachel (UK) is already practising the song in Dutch.
Afterwards Ali gave lessons about all ‘buoys’ and how to navigate safely through the channel and when entering a harbour. Also the permanent crew tested the fire hoses to ensure safety. The weather conditions were perfect, good visibility, force three southerly winds and some sun. We had an uneventful watch and lots of interesting conversations. We were distracted by the smell or Irish stew being prepared by Jerry in the galley!
The murder game is still going on. 8 people are still alive! This afternoon we did the nautical challenge. Each watch had to prepare a game and the 'bosun-ski' will help us.
After lunch we threw the ‘message in a bottle overboard’ all of the watches have written some messages and put them into bottles. We hope somebody will find it at the coast of the UK or Denmark/The Netherlands.
After afternoon smoko we had some games with ropes. First we split to two teams. The task was to uncoil a mooring ropes, move forward (from the stern platform) to the foredeck and back again. Later we had some more rope – games. Particularly interesting was the individual competition coiling heaving lines. The jury took into account time of coiling as well as which coil was the most pretty!
The Irish gave a really wonderful presentation after the lovely Irish dinner.
Everybody told about a special area, sport, food and other famous days like St. Patricks day. After the presentation we all got an Irish coffee and Ronan (IR) was singing and playing guitar. Amanda played on the special Irish whistle and the other danced for us. It was a really nice evening, on deck and down below in the bar. Everybody enjoyed it.
Judy (IR), Fransizka (GE), Janine (NL)
Marcin (PL), Laura (UK)