At half past seven I wake up from irregular shocks that don't stop. It is the swaying bow that splits the waves. Each shock vibrates through the ship. The sea is rough and there is a strong wind. Drops of water hit the porthole.I have to hold on when I get out of bed. Outside, the English coast becomes visible in a sea of whitecaps. Bar again to start this voyage!With a beep Proximus reports that there is a connection with the English mainland. This is a great opportunity to quickly call Starling, the connection can jump off again in no time. She is about to take the A12 to work. In those few miles, she'll do over an hour, she looks terrible. The difference with my situation is painful, but still she sounds cheerful and I am glad to hear her voice. We hang up satisfied. If the telephone and internet connection fails soon, it will be until Sunday evening. Then we dock in the south of Portugal.When I step on E-deck I am blown away by an icy easterly wind. There is still GSM-connection and a Filipino sailor holds himself with one hand straight to a railing, with the other he makes a phone call. His hair hits his face, it is clearly an urgent call and he tries to shout out above the noise of the sea.
"I seek shelter on the starboard side."
We sail through the Strait of Dover and the cliffs of Dover and Folkestone present themselves in full glory. When the suneven breaks through, they light up in white. On the French side, Cap Griz Nez becomes visible, grey and threatening in the shade.The Alessia now sails at 16 knots. My first day at sea feels like a week. The wide water has a reassuring effect.My hands clasp around the railing, the wind blows away every thought of life on land. Every thought tout court. The spectacle is breathtaking and in the morning sun the water turns deep blue, exploding in light azure as a wave breaks. The sea is transparent, clear and pure.Now that I'm face to face with this water again, the same feeling as in May, on my way to Ireland, overwhelms me. This pure nature fills man with delight and joy. And also with nostalgia for the innocence of our childhood. For the child we once were, the sea was endless. From the beach, the sea reached to the sky. Water and air merged, because we were too small to see the horizon.Where I stand now, I do see the horizon, but the child is right: the sea is endless. This horizon evokes no limitations, but offers us freedom of mind and insight. The things that seemed so important to us on land no longer bother us. They no longer stand in our way, they have disappeared from our minds. Our gaze is wide again, our sight unlimited, both outward and inward.
"All this evokes the sea, for this is the True Sea."
No plastic floats around here or oil stains or chemical drums. The sea I see here is not dirty and lost because this is the True Sea. This True Sea surprises, because it does not correspond to the idea that is always kept in mind: that the sea is a pool of death, of destruction and plastic, that it is finished with the sea, by our fault, by our great fault, by our greatest fault. Lately it seems forbidden to be happy with the sea. The sea is being censored and we hardly dare believe that it still exists.Yet it exists and it will be the optimists who will save the True Sea. If you're standing here, you know that for sure.Captain's announcement: if I want to go back on deck, I'll have to ask the Duty Officer first. The Captain has seen me wandering the platforms and with this weather he's worried about my safety. Only if I stay on the stairs of deck E, I am allowed outside, but not a meter further. I resign myself to it, especially when I hear that the sailors checking outside the containers have also been called in. Only the cooling systems of the 73 food containers remain under surveillance on deck twice a day, even when it starts raining. It's a hell of a job; dangerous work.But the captain also has good news: I'm allowed on the bridge at any time, at the command. As compensation that can count. On the Elbfeeder I was allowed to go to Ireland and back once on the bridge, and after five minutes the captain looked at me hard outside.During lunch I got to know Gleb, who has been on the Alessia for 12 months as a cadet - candidate officer - perfectly. Gleb is an enthusiastic boy full of theoretical maritime knowledge. He loves sailing at sea and hopes for a future as an officer on a ship like this.His mouth does not stand still for a moment. He talks about his night lifts on the bridge on the 9th floor, with only the stars and the lights of other boats on the horizon. As he talks, I hear the echo of generations of our own sailors. Countless times have I listened in Antwerp pubs to seamen at rest or sailors who have left; where have they gone, where is the new generation,
"why don't any of us still want to go to sea?"
But I can ask the same question to construction workers; to plasterers, truckers, plumbers and nurses. Everyone knows the painful answer. Only nobody dares to say it out loud.Gleb leads me around. First a few decks down to the pool. There's a net stretched over it and it's empty. So I brought my swimming trunks for nothing. Quite naive on my part, because of course a swimming pool on a ship is filled with water from the sea and that is minus one degree at the moment. The gym next door has had its best time and the sauna is out of use. The Alessia is clearly already in winter mode.On my own floor is the salon for officers. I have passed it a couple of times but never entered it because it is always dark, with the curtains closed. Gleb ignites the lights. It's a cosy room with tables and chairs, soft carpet and a luxury bar. According to Gleb no one ever comes here, except for Christmas and New Year's Eve.I browse the spacious library. Gleb, himself a book aficionado, says: "Most of the books have been donated by aid organisations for seafarers, but on board there is not a cat that still reads. It seems there used to be, but not anymore. And those DVD's are only in the drawer here. After the shift everyone is sitting in his cabin watching the screen of his computer. Take what you want, nobody will miss anything." He can't get out of here fast enough, but I know I'll be back.In the afternoon we sail into the Channel. The water's getting wider now.I fall asleep again in my cabin, when I actually wanted to read. I know the phenomenon. My body, neglected on land, claims its rights again at sea. While sleeping, the balance between mind and body is restored, so I give in. After all, I am a passenger. I have no obligation to stay awake. This sleep isn't stolen, it's a gift.
François Mitterand on balance: "The balance between action and meditation, between love and surrender, between freedom and asceticism is the secret of a fruitful life.
An hour later, I look out the window. There's no more land in sight. We are still sailing the route I followed last year towards Dublin and the Irish Sea. Maybe that's why I don't have a sense of real adventure yet. Only tomorrow afternoon the ship will choose waters unknown to me. Beyond Land's End, the Alessia then heads south in a straight line to Cap Finisterre, on the western tip of Spain.Due to the approaching winter, my time use so far cannot be compared to the voyage aboard the small freighter Elbfeeder. Then it was May and I spent many hours on the outside platforms, out of the wind, much in the sun.Now, after a few seconds, the angry cold and the strong northeasterly wind chases me back inside. This makes the daily schedule more monotonous. Monotonous on board is not the same as annoying. Life only takes a more intimate turn. Joris Van Bree of Cptn Zeppos compares the sailors he met on his voyage to New York with monks; he calls them the monks of the sea and now that it is cold and quickly dark, this ship indeed approaches the definition of a monastery.The corridors are long, empty and the linoleum shines with cleanliness. On the mats in front of the sailors' doors are shoes and slippers. Only once in a while I meet a crew member in the stairwell between the nine floors. At sea there are shifts of four hours on, eight hours off, so somewhere there is always someone asleep. On each floor, signs call for silence. Don't slam the doors. Don't shout. Have respect. I think back to the sign on the frosted glass door that closed the entrance to the priest's lodgings in the college: "Lock! Silence!"Meanwhile, the ship goes from left to right and sways up and down in long strokes. For days on end, at the same rhythm of the sea that you don't see, but hear.
"The absence of social media, music or radio takes some getting used to, but it's gently becoming blissful."
Silence shuts out side issues and makes me more receptive to the essentials every day. What are my essentials? My essentials are private and I don't communicate them, but everyone has them and after a while they surface, just like hidden desires and suppressed dreams.At this time of my journey, my main concern is limited to building up contact with my new environment, without bruising anyone, including myself. If I can build up a beautiful relationship with the crew, I can face my true essentials anywhere on this ship. If I feel like it. And when I don't feel like it, I look at the sea.Who have I met so far? There's the Romanian cadet Gleb, barely 22 and with a lot of Balkan brandy and as much intelligence. 3° officer Lawrence, a cautious Filipino boy who is 25 but looks like 16 and has an enormous safety responsibility; the Polish 2nd engineer and the Romanian Chief Engineer - two behemoths of vents from which you can't get a word out, at most a nod from which you have to guess the meaning: benevolent or dismissive ? Furthermore a shy Romanian 3rd engineer electrician who sits at my table but never says a word. Chef Irwin and steward Rezking are extremely helpful and always happy Filipinos, they are the accessible types you find everywhere and in this mess they are exactly in place.There are other Filipinos and Eastern Europeans I don't know, but they all have one thing in common: they are naturally quiet types, with sparse movements and an attitude that is never intrusive, rather waiting. At the table with the captain and the Chief Mate and first driver - both Romanians - it is usually very quiet. Do the two Eastern Europeans have to get used to the authority of the Filipino captain who, moreover, is only just on board ? Is it because the usual order of precedence at sea has now suddenly been reversed? I take it for granted not to pay any more attention.
"There's no music at dinner, there's no television, the mess is an oasis of calm."
Outside, the crew works in the roar of the sea, machines and cooling systems, but inside it is quiet. The conversations are sparse but not unpleasant and after a quarter of an hour everyone leaves, a meal never lasts longer.Even small things are respected. A sailor lives in one small place for a long time and details get as much attention as the main things. Everything has its place and its rights, otherwise this life is unlivable. A pot on the buffet has its fixed place and is put back to the millimetre after use. I'm not used to it yet, to this eye for the small. When the captain leaves the mess, he stops at the plates from which I just took cheese and salami. He neatly folds the plastic foil over them again and gives me a friendly nod. Nobody has seen it, but I have understood.
*
By ten o'clock at night, I'll be passing the bridge.I come out of the bright light of the stairwell and when the door closes behind me, I don't see a stitch. It's pitch-dark on the bridge. Here, 52 meters high above the sea, everything inside and outside is equally black. Only the foam of the breaking waves has a light, phosphorescent glow.The radar screens and gauges light up at low tide around it I see the vague contours of 3rd Officer Lawrence and cadet Gleb on duty. They don't give much shit, they are concentrated. The course of this enormous ship has been plotted digitally, but adjusting and reacting to unexpected situations depends on these two twenty-somethings, the youngest of which still suffices with acne pimples!We are between the French Cherbourg and the island of Guernsey on one side and the English Plymouth on the other side. The Alessia now sails at 19 knots.Gleb shows the course on the radar: a straight red dotted line between the point of Brittany and the western point of Spain. We will sail 800 kilometres on the invisible separation between the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic Ocean. In this elongated area, two opposing currents meet and the sea becomes even rougher from now on. I will go to bed early. I count on the swell to rock me to sleep quickly.
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