We have now been away 14 days and most of us are slowly beginning to get the long-trip rhythm in our bodies. Actually, there is no rhythm – more like the opposite. There is nothing predictable about it at all. The day has various lengths, we sleep and eat at the strangest times and for long periods we wear the same clothes for several days at a time.
And suddenly we are in harbour. Portsmouth for instance. A city with 200,000 inhabitants and thousands of tourists. Suddenly we are visitors in a town with many temptations and options. Shops, museums, bars… And life begins to feel a bit like that most of us know from ordinary summer holidays. Go for a walk, drink a cup of coffee, visit a museum. A little midday nap and then out to drink a beer or two. That’s how days in harbour can quickly become.
And the anchor watch takes care of the public. Things have been lively in Portsmouth with lots of interested people on the quay asking about the voyage and the project, and the crew has shown them round the ship with their usual pride.
And then off we go again. Long hours on the Sea Stallion working in shifts of four hours.
Trimming the sail, keeping a lookout, small repairs to rigging and ship, baling out, eating, sleeping. For hours on end time just goes and boredom has a slight hold of us all the whole time.
We sleep when the weather lets us – preferably at night of course, but for many of us it isn’t for many hours out of the 24. We begin to lose all sense of time after 24–30 hours of sailing. We can see what the time is, of course, but it has less meaning whether we eat at 8 o’clock or 4 o’clock, or sleep at noon or midnight.
And then another harbour. Perhaps in the middle of the night after a long trip with broken sleep. Suddenly we have to catch up on it and we tumble down into our sleeping bags on the floor of a store, a class room or our tent. And life on land begins again.
I think it’s what modern management calls being “flexible”...