Storm at sea. At half past three at night my bottle of wine falls off the table, followed by my telephone, stationery and camera. The night is black. The ship slowly rises and then dives with the bow into the waves. I have to hold on all over the place while biting my head off. The rolling is even worse, the floor tilts sharply to the left, then to the right again and my bottle follows the movement, from the bed to the desk and back. Tomorrow this wine can't be drunk anymore.The rest of the night consists of sleeping and waking up. Everything that can rattle, everything that isn't fixed beats back and forth (like the door of my wardrobe) and the wall panels moan. Once in a while you can hear outside a pounding, hard confrontations of metal against metal. This ship is 300 meters long, weighs 85,000 tons and in a harbour it belongs to the big boys, but with this weather it is just a nutshell with which the sea plays a game out of boredom.In the morning, washing and brushing your teeth becomes a difficult task. One time I hit my head hard against the mirror. Shaving me now is asking for a bloodbath, so for now I let my beard grow.I look out my window. It's already light because we turned back the clock one hour last night. The sea looks like a kettle of boiling water. The containers seem to want to slide overboard at every dive. No way to go out now.I climb along the inner stairs to the bridge.
"Here, at the highest point of the ship, the storm is most palpable."
The outside doors are blocked with a wooden crossbeam.You sometimes read that the sea resembles a living creature, with attacks of rage and quirks against which nothing can be done, but that is exactly what you see from here. The sea is full of venom. Foam heads as far as the eye can see, black depths and a horizon that no longer stands still. The officers grin. They like this. It's windforce 8!We are 600 kilometres off the French coast and the currents between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf are fighting it out between us. This long strip has been notorious for centuries and every year ships go to the basement. But we don't. The engines toil and the 8.20 metre bronze propeller propels our ship southwards. It's not until tonight that we reach the tip of Spain.
"I leave the outside world to what it is."
In the abandoned officers' lounge, I turn on the lights. The curtains are closed and give a safe feeling. Outside the storm is raging, inside it's all elegance. The curtain fabric is of the same soothing green as the carpet and the deep seats. The furniture and the bar are made of wood and copper shines everywhere. On one wall hangs a colourful street scene of Havana, on the other an elongated copper etching reminiscent of the very first voyage of the Alessia to China on 2 November 2001: "Celebration to MSC Alessia's maiden voyage calling Qingdao Port".No one ever comes here and because the swell pushes me down when I bend or squat, I comfortably lay down on the carpet and let the stock of books go through my hand, mostly English and German literature of all kinds. The novels have been donated by people with a heart for the sea, unaware that their books are dying a silent, unreaded death here.In the end I choose a book that received the American National Book Award in 1961: "The Moviegoer" written by Walker Percy and set in New Orleans, Mississippi. I settle down on one of the screwed-down benches. The first paragraph grabs me. The sentences are direct and bald, without adjectives and addressed directly to the reader: "This morning my aunt sent me a message. She wants me to have lunch with her this afternoon. Since I am always on Sunday with her lunch and today is Wednesday, it means only one thing: she wants to have one of her serious conversations with me".Before I realize it's late and dark. I close the book and cut out the light. When I leave, the salon regains its role of useless luxury. Tomorrow I'll continue reading. It's a beautiful book.
*
The Filipino cook Irwin came on board in Bremerhaven, it is his first voyage on this ship and he pulls out all the stops. The crew thinks he is much better than the previous one and he gets compliments all the time. Rightly so: yesterday we ate a delicious piece of leg of lamb in a full storm - the last thing you expect on a cargo ship. He makes the pizza for tonight with his own hands and his stew of sardines with tomatoes and peppers I will remember for a long time.The food budget on a cargo ship is never big and a good ship's cook is above all a cook who can conjure up leftovers. In the Gault-Millau for Galleys, Irwin gets a well-deserved 14 from me !Still, I won't eat hot tonight. I limit myself to the buffet that is always ready for those who want a bite to eat in between. The milk and fresh cheese are Turkish, the fruit juice Greek, the chocolate is German, the tea Portuguese and the bread and cheese Dutch. The nationality of the salami, the sausage and the blue cheese remains unknown, but the quality is quite good. I barely move and sleep a lot, so after two slices of bread I have enough.
"Still, I'm doing what everybody here does after dinner. I'm going up to the galley and I'm calling Irwin to say thank you."
9:00 p.m., I'm back on the bridge. Air and water, that's all you can see outside. According to the radar screen we are sailing at a great distance along Cap Finisterre on the tip of Spain. The sea is calmer after 800 kilometres of rough weather and storm and from here we descend south, along the Spanish and then the Portuguese coasts. According to the 2nd officer we reach the port of Sines in the south of Portugal tomorrow afternoon.I hope I can set foot ashore, I hear that the town is close to the harbour. For the Alessia it is a bit of coming home, after all we sail under the Portuguese flag. I'm curious myself. I've never been to Portugal.
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