Trip to Kalmar

It all began at 8.30am when we were supposed to be at the ship. We started off making everything ready for departure, we kept a pretty slow pace because we knew the compass was broken and some guy were to come over and fix it around midday. It was really nice, the sun was shining and it was all good. Pretty hot though, but you couldn't really complain.
Later when we had done pretty much everything, there was nothing left to do except waiting for that guy to arrive so we could leave Stockholm. Seconds turned into minutes. Minutes into hours. Nobody knew what was going on.
In the meantime, some people grabbed a smoke. Some took the life boat and left to do something fun. A few put on survival suits and went for a swim. Others were looking through binoculars at girls who were out jogging.
And some were just looking at the cars that passed by on the road, hoping that one of them would be the guy to fix our compass.Finally the guy arrived and they could start fix the thing. 11 hours... I'm not kidding here, eleven hours had passed before we were ready to leave shore! 7.30pm and we were finally on our way towards Kalmar

Sorry for the bad quality!

A few hours after depature (around midnight) it was our (Me and two friends) turn to take the wheel, navigate our way through Stockholm's archipelago in almost complete darkness. Nothing to look at except a few flashing lights here and there.

After 4 hours of nothing but steering and looking at darkness and flashing lights a few others came up to relieve us from our watch. At 4am we finally got to sleep. But for what purpose? At 7 o'clock breakfast was served and the whole room became a mess. Impossible to sleep in all that noise. Simply put, I didn't get much sleep the two nights we spent onboard trying to reach the town of Kalmar.

The class room, sleeping room, TV-room, living room and dining room.

We arrived in Kalmar on Wednesday around 1pm and were forced by our teachers to go ashore and visit Kalmar Maritime Academy which were pretty much the sole purpose of the whole trip, at least that's what our teachers thought. We young students had another reason to tag along, but I'll get to that later. After the long visit it was time for us to get us some dinner at a fancy place called 'Bistro Bar'. We hadn't had any real food for days so it tasted really good. (All we have had were some pre-made / oven-heated stuff)
One bad thing though; our table didn't get any potatoes, those shitty waiters forgot us, so after a couple minutes of eating nothing but meat, we knocked on the kitchen door and after a while they came out with a small plate of french fries and said "Sorry, that's all that could be given within such short time". But it was still good, compared to what we have had onboard.
After the dinner it was time to me to go back to the ship because I had to be watching the gangway for an hour, between 7pm and 8pm. Time went pretty fast because a friend called me to keep me company. I sat there for an hour talking in my hands-free and everyone who were nearby looked at me as if I were crazy, talking to myself.

When my shift was over I ran back into town to join my friends at some bar. My phone had run out of batteries during that one hour of talking though, so I wasn't able to take any pictures from there. The first place we were at were pretty expensive so we decided to go someplace else. We went back to Bistro Bar where we previously have had our dinner. It was a pretty nice place at night.
After a couple of drinks there it was time for one of us to go back to the ship to take over the gangway watch. Me and a couple more stayed and got ourselves some more. About an hour later it was time for us to leave, a friend of ours didn't want to, but we managed to drag him out of there and back to the ship.
Once there I went inside to bed and fell asleep almost instantly. I woke up a couple of times during the night though, because of some not-so-very-sober classmates that dropped in from time to time.

The next day started off really good. The weather was nice as usual and it was the day for us to return home. As always there was alot of waiting for us guys on deck. The people on the bridge (where you steer the ship) had to decide how to make the manouver to turn the ship around to get it out of the dock. They went with the idea to let one rope stay attached to shore and put alot of tension on it while they accelerated and steered. The whole manouver was quite risky because if that rope would have snapped, it could have been our heads rolling on the deck. Well, maybe not, but a few broken bones atleast. And then the ship would go quite fast straight into the dock on the other side., causing alot of damage. Luckily it went smoothly, but as a guy on deck who puts his life at stake, I would not recommend that kind of manouver.

The journey back went alot faster, I didn't have to steer the ship on the way back home, so - even if I accually should been doing some work - I slept most of the time. I thought that I had earned it.

We came back to Stockholm around 10am on Friday but we were not allowed to go home until 12 o'clock because appearantly someone had smashed a few windows that night in Kalmar and they suspected that some from our class were guilty. Everyone had to talk to our principal in case we had seen or heard anything. Which I hadn't. We all grew really tired of waiting, but soon we were allowed to leave that goddamn boat.

I'm really happy to be home, and thanks to everyone who welcomed me! Love goes to all of you! <3

- Rickard