Middle-of-the-ocean-watch-change-splash-party

4 March 2014

Update by Job:
“Today it was time for the long awaited and completely sold out ‘middle-of-the-ocean-watch-change-splash-party’. It lived up to its name; we were at the middle of the ocean (sort of), the watches changed, the fire hose created a nice splash on the middle deck with water splashing up to the shins and it was a party indeed. What made it a party? Well, there was music. Summer came through the speakers, an appropriate soundtrack for this sunny day. Every day the number of bare chests increases. A drink with the classic umbrella in it makes sure it’s really summer and a party. Since we don’t have these little umbrellas on board we used coloured straws, they did a perfect job filling this gap. After these thirty minutes of relaxation everybody smoothly continued to do what he or she were doing before.
Of course it‘s not all joy and happiness on board, there are some serious issues every now and then. It was two days ago that we switched from good old Douwe Egberts coffee (Dutch) to the Argentinean black gold. This, so it seemed, forced change aroused some deeper emotions. I keep it short and polite: ‘I can’t make coffee manually (when the generator is off)’, ‘ That looks nice and black, maybe one scoop less next time?’, ‘Is there already sugar in it, or what?’, ‘What kind of mud is this?’, ‘We already finished the coffee from Rotterdam?’ After long talks about and short searches for coffee the answer to the last question is ‘No’. Somewhere at the back of a store there was still about thirty kilo of our precious. Luckily. For now we can go back to our normal lives, with nice coffee.”