Sailing Along - Scotland to Norway

Our last sail of the semester: short and bittersweet.  Not much time to dwell on that though, we were all busy getting ready for our grand arrival in Norway.  Once more there was a deep clean of the ship, getting everything clean and shiny so we’d be looking our best as we brought Sorlandet home.

Of course there were a few “lasts” on this trip, I stood my last night watch (not a daily occurrence on this trip but something I did about 6 times over the semester), we did a last Galley of the Week celebration with ice cream and sprinkles, we bought our last chocolate bars from Slapps and the General Store sold off what it could before closing up.

The captain had his daughter and father visiting on this sail (the novelty of a 5 year old on board was muchly enjoyed by the crew, who cares about language barriers!) and he took a day “off” to enjoy their company.  The replacement captain was picked from the names of those students who had reached a certain level of seamanship and had stood a watch as Apprentice Officer of the Watch.  Adrianna had 24 hours as acting captain, one of her first decisions was to let Sture know he needed to cover her stand-by watch in the afternoon!

Adrianna sitting in the captain's spot for lunch

My roommate, Anna-Marie, celebrated her 30^th birthday on this sail and as well as the (Class Afloat) traditional buckets of water dumped on her at 0800 colours, Scandinavian tradition dictates that those turning 30, who are unmarried, get pepper dumped on their heads as well.  Not my idea of a good time but I guess you can’t mess with tradition.

Our last night before arrival was spent at anchor in a beautiful little cove.  We had family dinner in the banjer and in the evening a singer from a shanty choir led us in shanties, ones we knew and ones that were new, another preparation for our grand arrival the next day.