July 8th

We are at sea currently, as I write this, which means it wont get sent until we have docked, if it even does then, but nevertheless, I am writing this while sailing. I have only 2 more days left on my 4 til 8 watch (yeah!) and then 1 off day before back to normal deck work.

Watch is a lot more fun at sea. We go up to the bridge, and do sea watch from there. There are more people about then, 1 Officer, 1 Cadet, 1 Lookout, and 1 Helmsman. And me as well, in training/learning.

It was quite exciting to me to be able to say for the first time "Daniel at the Helm, steering course one-eight-zero."! Yes! I have had the privilage of steering the Doulos! Very cool. I imagine it begins to get less fun and more boring after the 100th hour or so of it, but I have only been at the helm for 3 hours now (I think.)

Being on watch is cool too. This morning, we saw whales! For about 2 hours, every 15 minutes or so another whale would be spotted, and we would sail past it, as it splashed, lifted it's tail, sent up a spout, etc! Extremely amazing. They are HUGE.

My body is begining to get used to this crazy schedule, but nevertheless, I managed to oversleep and miss lunch today. Luckily, the mess always has spare food about, and I could get 6 or so slices of bread and also there are Marmite and Honig about. You know, if I decide to come back to Doulos for 2 years, I will have to learn some German before I join. So many Germans on board, also Dutch, and South Africans.

There is a shared network drive on board for people to share pictures, documents, etc, and so I hope to get copies of the whale pictures from this morning, and hopefully will be able to make a CD of all of the pictures I have from there now in my documents, from all the times we have been places and I have forgotten my camera.

I still am not seasick -- Thank you Father -- and perhaps that is partly why I am enjoying this life so much.

I have been asked to play with the Sunday service music group, and so must off to practice soon, before my watch, and before it gets too noisy, as we should be arriving in a few hours. I don't know whether it will be in my watch or not yet, the current has not been so friendly, and we went through both sides of a storm. I had never really experienced a "calm in the middle of a storm" before, but this time, yeah. There was quite a large swell before, then the storm (I was on fireround and so missed most of it, but it was fairly rough, and lots of rain for a while), then it was reaallly calm. For about 2 hours, and then back again to the storm.

But my watch was over then, and I was eating breakfast, and heading bedwards. So, I must be off, many things to do.