The Watches

2009 07 05 - Day 9 - Baltic Sea

The ship sails 24 hours a day – the wind don't stop and neither the sea, so why should we!? The crew and trainees are split into 3 watches who work 4 hours on, 8 hours off. I was placed in the 4-8 watch which meant my day roughly took the following shape:
03:30 ish wake up and get ready to go on watch,
04:00-08:00 do whatever our watch leaders decide to get the ship sailing faster & better – sometimes lots of work, sometimes not so much.
08:00 breakfast then (usually) back to bed
11:00 get up so the banjer could be cleaned
12:00 lunch
12:00-16:00 free time
16:00-20:00 on watch again but take turns to scoff a quick dinner from 17:30
20:00-03:30 free time / bed (usually between 21:30-22:30)

Besides keeping the ship in the best form, the on-duty watch also manned the helm, kept lookout, checked for fires/other on-board dangers and kept the time with bell strikes every half hour.