We thoroughly enjoyed this update from one of our clients who is voyage crew on the current transatlantic crossing from Las Palmas, Gran Canaria to Salvador de Bahia, Brazil.

My left leg grew by 5 cm in the past week. To be able to walk straight on the ship … human nature’s amazing faculty to adapt! Seriously – we have been living at a 20 degree angle this past week. Makes you wonder if the ship has not been built wrongly …oh, and it’s 20 degrees to starboard – that’s the nautical term for right…go figure – same thing goes for ropes by the way, of which there is none on the ship, no Sir, they all have different names!! – but I diverge…

Back to our angled ship. It’s quite fun actually to watch everyone walk in mysterious ways… for those who know Monty Python’s sketch of the Ministry of silly walks, you’ll get a pretty good idea of what I mean. One step to the left, sorry to port, 2 small steps to starboard, one leap forward… Frank, our cameraman, got his pas-de-deux to a fine art. And I’m not even talking about the arms – they just grab anything, or anyone for that matter, nearby.

Life at an angle also makes your trip to the lavatory a unique experience every time. I now understand why real sailors do it sitting down (for the ladies out there, there truly is a drawing stating this fact in the gents’ toilets). Sitting down generally equates to throwing yourself down as fast as possible after pulling down your pants – I seem to enjoy a pretty good toilet seat hit rate if I may say so. Once seated, life’s a breeze – feet firmly planted in front of you, leaning ever so slightly backwards (don’t try this at home), you could even read a book like that. Once the reason for your visit is done and over with however, things get complicated. Standing up is generally quite doable – but now your legs are blocked by the pants around your ankles (get the picture?…thought so) – so no quick balancing movement with one of your legs. This is where your bum, elbows and arms come in handy – any 2-point blocking position using the above will generally allow you to pull up those pants, and resume a half-decent position – good thing one is alone in these circumstances… quick wash of hands, and out you are you’d think. Not so. As everything is at an angle, so is the water that comes out of the faucet. Big deal you say. But you see, if the sink is small, then that water flows not into the sink, but outside of it. So this takes a bit of figuring out where to put your hands to profit from the water you just turned on!

Life at an angle…I need to cut this blog post short, as writing at an angle is really quite tiresome…but good thing about our life at an angle is that the people don’t seem to change – everyone is as cheerful as ever, and life aboard is still as enjoyable – thank you all for such a pleasant trip!

Iskander