Loco

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This letter is part III and should be read after Part I and Part II

September 7th 2007

Dear family,

What a difference a day makes! Since I last wrote I was feeling a lot more positive but in the few days since things have gotten (is that a word?) even better and I’m now having a great time! I’m sure the ups and downs of the first few days were perfectly normal considering the bizarre situation I’ve put myself in but I’m glad that the early panic has passed. As you will know from my last letter, I made a friend. As I said, she left after we’d known each other for only one day, but having managed to build the courage to speak to her in the first place, I have become less nervous about approaching other people.

A couple of days ago the ship had a welcome party for the passengers. Granted it was a bit a late, seeing as it was my tenth day but it was still a nice gesture. There was some extra special food and a glass of wine for all the passengers and the officers, not to mention no short supply of vodka. The Russians love a good toast so there were lots of raised glasses and a nice atmosphere. I can’t remember if I described the other passengers for you in my last letter so just briefly: Bert, a retired German doctor who is just having a holiday, and Claude and Collette, a French couple in their early fifties. They’re all very nice and we manage to have a few conversations, although with varying degrees of understanding.

Anyway, just by coincidence, the night of the welcome party was also Bert’s birthday so after dinner he invited the passengers to the deck for a few glasses of champagne as the sun went down. And then, to my delight a dolphin starts leaping out of the water and doing flips. It was just like a film! Brilliant. Once the other passengers went to bed, I went to chat to some of the crew. There’s no doubt that I was more bold due to a little Dutch courage, but once I got over the initial nerves, it was fine. I’m familiar with quite a few of them and I’ve enjoyed a few evenings of table tennis as well as some truly terrible Ukranian folk music, and some not-so-bad Russian hip-hop. I’ve also managed to master a few Russian words which has increased my popularity enormously (it seems my accent is hilariously bad). A couple of them have now taken to calling me “Queen Katarina” as apparently the second queen of Russia was a Katharine too. The point of all this is now that I have people to chat to and sometimes have somewhere to go, besides my cabin.

Funnily enough I’d actually got used to the solitude and was quite happy in my own company, but it’s always more fun to have people to spend time with, even if most of them are fifty-something Russians. I thought I might have a revelation about my personality, to find myself in a cliched sort of way, but actually all the solitude proved that I already know myself quite well.

We are currently somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, having passed through the Azores two days ago. The weather was pretty bad so all we could see was a tiny glimpse of a mountain-top on one of the islands. Claude told me that the peak, which is about 2500 metres above sea-level, has claimed the lives of many people, including the pilots of one of the first planes to attempt to fly across the Atlantic. Even though we were about 20 miles away there were more signs of life (see drawing of bird for Dad to look up) so it was exciting to watch the birds as they skimmed across the water’s surface, looking for fish. Most days there’s nothing to see but sea and sky, usually there aren’t even any clouds. I was out on the deck the other day and actually considered getting my binoculars out to look more closely at a bit of driftwood. However, this morning I was lucky to catch a glimpse of a flying fish which leapt at list one meter high and three across in an arc. They’re quite erratic so are difficult to spot but if you’re patient you can see one every now and again.

I used my spare time to learn a bit about the boat and the various bits of equipment. I’ve learnt how to check our coordinates on the charts (which are produced in Taunton) and the second officer actually me steer the ship for a bit. Usually it’s on auto-pilot but they have manual controls for approaching the harbour. It was quite fun turning five degrees port or starboard etc., although the rudder takes ages to turn so it’s a slow process. Did you know that early ships only had a gangway and docking facilities on one side - hence “port-side” - while the other side faced out to the stars! Talking of stars, it’s amazing how many you can see from the top deck and there’s no light pollution because the bridge is lit at night with red light only so as not to affect visibility.

At the moment we’re anchored because the engineers are fixing part of the engine, replacing a piston, I think. It’s taking a while so I think we’re a day behind schedule but I’m not bothered. Another day doesn’t matter seeing as I’ve been here so long. I’m saving “One hundred years of Solitude” and working my way through the ship’s library. Unfortunately, I’ve had the terrible misfortune of reading a Danielle Steele novel. This is one of my few regrets in life.

My puzzle is coming along well, I never thought I could get so much satisfaction from a jigsaw. I was so happy when I found a particular piece the other day that I actually stood up and performed a jig while alone in my cabin. I’ve also recorded quite a few video diary bits on my camera and have some extraordinary photos of the water that I want to get framed when I get home. One of the crew speaks Spanish so I’ve been practising a little with him, although I suspect his Spanish is not quite as good as he claims as sometimes I’m sure he’s speaking absolute bollocks! The upshot of all this is that my days are fairly busy now and the time is flying past. We should be in Guadaloupe by the 14th or 15th and then it’s plain sailing until Costa Rica.

The weather now is absolutely glorious and you can tell Phillip that I’m staying out of the son during peak hours and wearing my cap. After all, cool cats wear hats! The swimming pool has now been filled with sea water. Last night the water temperature was 26 degrees at 9pm so it’s lovely. The pool is so small it’s barely worth swimming but I’ve been floating around and treading water for the sake of getting some exercise. I think that’s all I have to report. Wait, no! I just thought of something else. It’s wonderful every night we have to put the clocks back one hour as we move West so unlike in a plane where you set your watch to seven hours back all at one, we get a whole week of having another hour in bed every day. I don’t suppose this will be quite so fun on the way home. Now that’s everything, I hope you’re all OK.

Loads of love Kate

p.s. today 12th September I saw more flying fish. These ones were very small; they barely leave the surface of the water but they travel for at least ten metres. They’re more like running fish - amazing! And last night I saw three shooting stars in as many minutes and the milky way was as clear as day. The second officer saw me star-gazing and has offered to show me a maritime book of constellations if the sky is clear. I almost forgot, even though it was totally clear where we were last night, there was a storm far off on the horizon and I could see the lightning from miles and miles away!

Today (13th Sept) we crossed the Tropic of Cancer, nothing to see obviously but exciting nonetheless. I also ate some cow’s tongue for dinner! It didn’t taste bad but I kept thinking about my own tongue as I ate so I didn’t eat too much. There’s been a change of schedule so tomorrow we’re going to Martinique for a few hours then going to Guadaloupe instead of the other way round. It’s a shame we won’t get more time to explore but that’s the nature of freight travel I suppose.

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This letter is part II and should be read after Part I and before Part III

September 5th 2007

Dear family,

I thought it only fair that I write to you again, although this letter will arrive at the same time as the first I wrote. I have discovered that writing letters is very therapeutic and with each letter I write filling five pages on both sides, also very time-consuming. The real reason though that I am writing again is to reassure you all that I am OK. The first days on the boat were probably some of the hardest days I’ve ever experienced in my life but I have emerged triumphant. Tomorrow will be a week since I left you at Dover and although I do still feel pangs of homesickness now and then, I am coping far better than I thought possible in these first few days.

I have developed a routine which helps to pass the time. It mainly consists of early nights and hours of reading but the days are passing more quickly all the time. I find it quite difficult to resist clock-watching, a totally fruitless exercise, but still the time passes faster than before.

We were joined at Hamburg by another passenger whose name I have forgotten. He is a sixty-something year old German who used to be a doctor and he seems very nice. His English is not particularly good and my German is limited to a few useless GCSE phrases so our conversation is stilted, but it is nonetheless nice to eat at the table with a companion, even if we do rarely speak. We should be picking up two more passengers at Le Harve where we should dock at 9 tonight. I know that they’re in their late fifties but I am hopeful that they speak English.

I rather wish I’d had the sense to join the boat at Le Havre because I find it frustrating to think that after this long I am still so far from my destination. Hamburg was a nice city and pleasant to stroll around for a few hours, but I could certainly have given it a miss. As for Antwerp, I was not impressed at all. I might have been walking English high-street - bloody Starbucks and C&A, it’s ridiculous. It’s not clear whether I’ll get a chance to get off at Le Harve yet as we were delayed last night by bad weather (my first wave of seasickness and I hope my last) but it all depends on the tide. We may leave first thing in which case the steward will post this for me, otherwise I hope to find a post office myself.

I’m not struggling so much with the boredom either and I’ve made it through a few chapters of my Spanish book. It’s rather hard to follow actually but I do an hour a day and it seems to be sinking in. I also found out that they will fill the swimming pool at Le Havre for the Atlantic crossing so I hope that I will be able to have the occassional dip as it gets hotter. I’ve also started a jigsaw puzzle that I found in the passengers’ day room.

Think of me on the 10th… when I will officially be half-way through this mammoth journey and probably somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. It turns out that we won’t be stopping at the Azores after all, we pass nearby but do not dock which is a pity so it will be nine days non-stop across the Atlantic as originally planned. But after those nine days I am on the final stretch.

The stories I’ve heard about Columbia have totally put me off leaving the boat on those stops so unless I have company I will be boat-bound on those days which is a shame. Alex, the girl I made friends with, was telling me stories about the lengths people will go to to smuggle drugs from Columbia. Her father told her of one man who climbed inside a satellite thing on the deck, I don’t know how because she showed me and it’s pretty tiny. She also told me a man they found who had stowed away in the compartment where they store fruit. He was lucky to be found before they set sail because when closed that area is almost completely air-tight and refrigerated to minus 5 degrees centigrade; he would surely have died. I’ve been told that the security will be stepped up at Columbia to counteract this sort of thing as the shipping company is given hefty fines if anyone is found. To be honest it won’t be hard to improve on current security measures as no-one has yet checked my passport. I remember on that film by that guy who bought a freighter to Canada talking about daily life-boat drills. There is no such thing on this boat so I took it upon myself to read all the safety guidelines and practise putting on my life-jacket. Better safe than sorry.

I hope when I arrive that I will have received an email from Raleigh with the address of where you can write to me when I am volunteering. When you get this letter though, I’d love it if you could write me an email. I know I won’t receive it for a few weeks but I’d love to get news from home as soon as I reach a computer. I hope you’re all well and sorry I shocked you a little with the first letter. I think it’s important for me to send it because it captures how I felt during the first few days. But I hope this letter reassures you that I survived, despite my panic.

I love and miss you all loads.

Love Kate

P.S. I just got your postcard this morning, it’s so lovely to hear your news. I’m so sad that I couldn’t see you waving, I did scan the cliffs but I was a bit too upset to stand out on the deck so stayed in my cabin for privacy. The worst thing was that after 15 minutes on board, the steward asked if I was going back into Dover for the day so I could have spent longer with you after all but I didn’t have my phone to call you. I miss you all very much.

Read part III

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This letter is part one of three

1st September 2007

Dear family,

I hesitated before writing to you and in fact this is my second draft as my first began with two pages of self-pitying drivel. The truth of the matter is that I am not enjoying myself at all and have spent the last few days in fits of tears, with no-one to console me. This journey is going to be far harder than I ever anticipated; I knew it would be a challenge but I had no idea it would be this difficult. I had prepared myself for boredom as best as I could but I had expected to be so lonely. I am finding it to be quite crippling. So far I am the only passenger, we expect to pick up one more in Hamburg, and a couple more at La Havre [note: although the ship left from Dover, it called at ports in mainland Europe before beginning the Atlantic crossing]. I am desperately hoping that they are kind to me or else this will surely be quite a soul-destroying trip.

The crew are nice to me and offer me pleasantries but really there is no-one to talk to. Since I left you in Dover, the closest thing I’ve had to real human interaction was a stilted ten minute conversation with the taxi driver who took me into Antwerp. I don’t mean for you to worry about me, especially as you have no way to get in touch with me, but I just hope that I get used to these feelings and that the journey passes as quickly as possible. I almost rang from Antwerp yesterday but I decided against it as I am sure that speaking to you will only set me back to square one. Perhaps I will have the courage to phone from Hamburg but I think that it will make me crave home even more.

The boat is definitely interesting and I have marvelled at how they use enormous cranes to lift the containers on and off the vessel. The interior leaves lots to the imagination. Upon boarding the ship I was briefly shown around the ‘facilities’ - a gym with archaic bits of machinery, mostly weight training equipment that is totally unsuitable for me to use, a swimming pool that is minus one vital ingredient - water! A library full of books exclusively in German and Polish. The only English book a John Grisham novel that holds no appeal. A dart board with a single broken dart! Hardly the provision of things to keep me entertained that I had hoped for. Oh, and the glorious sundeck, I almost forgot to mention, a single broken deckchair next to one of the huge chimneys out of which blasts diesel fumes day and night.

The food leaves rather a lot to be desired too as the main ingredient appears to be oil - fried chicken or fish, with salad drenched in vinaigrette. Yesterday I was presented with beef tomatoes covered in grated cheese; “I’ll scrape off the cheese” I thought, but no, the cheese was concealing another oil-based delight, a large dollop of mayonnaise. I am quite sure I have offended the kitchen staff and I have certainly lost some weight.

Back to the boat, my cabin is really very nice. It is made up of two rooms, one with two single beds and a wardrobe, the other with a desk and a sofa where I have been doing my logic problems. There is also a small en suite bathroom.

The view out of my window is pretty amazing. I look out of the front of the boat onto the main deck that is filled with containers. I had originally thought that these huge containers were the primary cargo so was extremely surprised yesterday, when in Antwerp, they lifted the deck to reveal hundreds of crates of pineapples.

It’s pretty amazing to see how they move the crates onto the cranes.

We are now on our way to Hamburg. I think that we are quite far off schedule as we didn’t leave Antwerp until around 8.30 this morning as opposed to last night.

I hope this letter reaches you and that you’re all well. I don’t want you to worry about me, no-one’s ever died from loneliness have they?! Bloody hell I hope not! I’ll probably re-read this letter when I get home and laugh at myself. I will certainly be a much stronger person once I reach Costa Rica - if I can face this I can face anything!

I don’t feel as though I need to prove anything to myself or anyone else so if I want to come home, I’ll be back before you can say carbon footprint. Maybe you’ll have to expel me from Loco2 Jamie but I’d rather be a hypocrite than experience this kind of loneliness again. Roll on Costa Rica, I don’t think I’ll be able to contain myself once we are near, the prospect of a youth hostel full of people who are in the same boat as me (ironic choice of phrase don’t you think?) makes me hopeful. And the thought of all those lovely Raleighers, young, old, posh, scallies, I don’t care, at least I will have friends!  They gave me a mini bottle of champagne when I arrived on board but I am saving it until I am there!

Writing this letter has made an enormous difference to how I feel, it’s almost like having a conversation with you. I’m going to try to finish this letter with some positives so that you know I am not totally dead inside - my cabin is in the fourth poop deck which I find very entertaining. Even though the inside of the boat stinks of cheap Eastern European fags, the deck smells of pineapples.  My daily routine of sit-ups is giving me abs of steel. I am really enjoying Half of a Yellow Sun and I bought more books in Antwerp. There are just enough films on board for me to watch roughly one every third day, and there is a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle in the day room.

So at least you know I can still see the positives, and I’ve already done one seventh of the entire trip. Once I get there I will be so proud. I might burst!

You may hear from me before this arrives, either way, writing this has lifted my spirits in a funny sort of way so expect more of these. If you don’t hear from me don’t think it’s because I don’t miss you, it is quite the opposite. By the way, no-one has checked my passport, pass this on to any fugitives you know.

All my love,

Kate xxx

3rd September 2007

I’m sure that you’re totally exhausted having just read five pages of my letter, but this page is an important addition. I didn’t post your letter from Hamburg because I was starting to feel a little better and I didn’t want to worry you too much. Granted I am still lonely and I find the solitude challenging, but I feel as though I’ve turned a corner. Today is my fifth day on the boat, and the second without tears. I don’t want to tear up the letter I wrote originally as it’s a true representation of how I was feeling but I think that those early emotions were as much to do with being shocked and overwhelmed by how alien this experience is, as by the feelings themselves.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suddenly feeling totally unfazed by being alone so much but I feel as though I can handle it better. And in fact for the last 24 hours I have had a friend. Having seen them eating dinner at the same time as me every day, I finally drummed up the courage to talk to an older man and the only other girl on the ship. It transpired that it was the captain and his daughter, a 16 year-old called Alex who has spent the last month on the ship with her father as a holiday. She is from Lithuania but her English was excellent. Sadly I only spoke to her properly yesterday and her trip ended today at 4pm when she caught a plane home from Hamburg, but nevertheless, for the last 24 hours I had someone to talk to and what a difference it has made.

She showed me around the boat loads, answering loads of my questions. We went up to the wheel house and had a real snoop at all the navigation equipment while we were at a port and I was able to talk to someone who understands first hand the boredom, and to an extent, the loneliness (as her father is mostly working). Also, she is familiar with lots of the crew so that really helped to take the edge off. It’s a shame that she had to leave today but it’s given me a boost to my confidence and I feel better prepared to face this challenge. Panic over. I can do this!

Read part II