One day on the
Warsaw Speleoclub's
mailing list a notice appeared about free places on a sailing trip on the Baltic Sea.
Their goal was to find some ship wrecks and dive down to some of them.
Even though I don't have scuba training and I have never been on a real cruise (not counting tourist ones),
I decided to find out what it looks like.
The trip didn't start out as planned - I was late for the train from Warsaw to Wladyslawowo.
So I packed my gear into the car; unfortunately this meant that instead of sleeping on the train,
I had a 5 hour drive ahead of me. I arrived at the port refreshed not at all.
Of course nobody here thought about a parking lot near the port - after all,
who would ever come to the port in their own car?
And would like to leave it somewhere nearby for the time of the trip!
Fortunately, I found a free parking place (and it was the only free one in the vicinity) near the sentry box...
Anyway, I made it to the boat just in time to see the previous crew leaving it.
Next, a lot of packing (food, diving gear), then we got water and fuel.
And finally we could leave the port - in the late afternoon.
I, with another guy, had the first watch. There were only 5 people on the boat -
this meant that we had 8 hour long watches every 8 hours (frankly? this was a totally idiotic idea).
So, after the early morning rise, the not so short trip, I had the watch... till 2 a.m.
And that was pretty funny: you stare at the compass having just enough consciousness to keep your eyes open;
you see that you're starting to drift off-course, so you try to steer in the correct direction.
But the boat starts turning even faster, so you try to steer in that direction even harder.
In that state of mind I just couldn't put the two together - only after several minutes
I finally became aware that I was trying to steer the wrong way
(and several hours earlier I had no problems with that at all)...
And near the end of my watch I started to hallucinate - I saw a canoe passing us aft of the boat...
What's worse, my sleeping berth was without any support on one of the sides (or at least I thought so).
So each wave would wake me up - I had to hold on to the bed's edge so as not to fall off.
Only when I got up in the morning the others told me about that sleeve that you can put up
just for that purpose... So, only after another watch I had a chance to get some sleep
(but only some 6-7 hours).
On the other hand, sailing itself was a lot of fun (despite the temperature - around 14 Centigrade).
I was worried about seasickness, but it turns out that I have no problems with that
(even when going down into the cockpit).
The wind was pretty strong (a 4 or a 5) so that the guys had some problems with using their sonar.
Food went down pretty well too (probably because of the low temperatures and the fatigue),
even though I usually prefer a different menu. :)
Also, I wanted to get some rest away from work, but such boredom is even more tiring than work.
Sit there and stare into the compass for 4 hours or more...
I also read that on the sea, away from big cities, the night sky will be a great sight.
But of course on all the nights that we were there, the sky was pretty much clouded over. :(
On the other hand, I just totally don't get this sailing "ethos" of not using the toilet on the boat.
It's the 21st century, people! And here such distrust towards such a well known device.
If there was no toilet on board, I would understand the pissing and shitting overboard.
But here's this nice toilet! But no, you have to put on the harness, strap yourself to the stays,
stick your ass overboard and do it. And then, some of the bigger waves wash your butt...
So! Maybe that's the issue - keeping clean? Anyway, I ended up with a mild constipation.
Everyone was on the deck, sitting pretty close, listening to the plops - I just couldn't do it...
With such a strong wind, the guys found and dived down to only two wrecks.
Then the wind got even stronger, so we decided to wait through it in Ustka
(we couldn't use the sonar at all in such big waves).
And here another surprise - no toilets for sailors... F**k, what a country!
I guess that if not for the period between the Wars most of the houses here
wouldn't even have an outhouse. Anyway, I had enough of all these attractions - I had to finally get some sleep.
Later on it turned out that on the following days the rest of the crew had a bit more luck with wrecks and diving.