After an incredible, amazing, memorable ten days on sea, I've finally arrived in Aberdeen: first stage of the summer's travels completed. It was an unbelievable time to say the least. I didn't know what to expect out of the trip, but I learned so much about sailing and saw some really cool things. Multiple whale sightings, big waves on the North Sea that would rock the ship up and down, little coastal towns in Denmark and Scotland, it was such a unique and wonderful experience. I actually got to spend a lot of time at the wheel of the ship holding the course, and when all the sails were set, with the sun shining, the boat on a 20 degree keel and doing 10 knots, it was just indescribable. Really calming and sublime. So glad I was able to take part in the trip.
As with all things, though, the journey was not without its problems. I had suspected that the leadership at ELSA was a little disorganized in the weeks leading up to the departure date, but I had no idea to what extent until I got on board the ship and set sail. On the Gulden Leeuw (our ship), there was one lady who was the organizinger, two teachers plus myself, and Burkhard, who runs the whole show. There was incredibly poor communication between all of us on the ELSA side and between the ELSA people and the 10+ member crew on the ship, to the point where the ship and the daily routine almost couldn't function and everyone was confused and frustrated as to what was going on. Burkard would disappear for big stretches of time, and proved to be basically incompetent and clueless--a really terrible leader. He is a heavy alcoholic, which I didn't pick up on at first, but towards the end of the trip he was drunk and angry quite a lot ot the time. Last night we had a team meeting to discuss how the trip went and things to improve for next year, which he showed up drunk to, and everything quickly degraded into a two hour yelling session with a lot of really childish comments and personal attacks (not the first time this happened on the trip, by the way). This morning around 8:30 I caught him sneaking to the back of the ship to down a glass of red wine before having breakfast, and the other teachers said they saw him bringing whole boxes of wine down to his cabin to drink in private. You can't do anything worthwhile without proper guidance and leadership and organization, and when the guy responsible for the whole thing is trashed all the time everything things fall apart. We were all very upset with things by the end.
So all in all a pretty negative experience so far as the teaching side goes. The kids paid a lot of money to go on this trip, and while everyone had fun in the end, it could have been so much better. I was really frustrated at some points, feeling like there was so much wrong with it, wanting to make it better somehow, and faced with the reality that there was really nothing I could do to fix it in my position.
But don't let that mislead you! Even with all of the insanity with the work side of the trip, the sailing side of the trip made up for everything a hundred times over. If I didn't already have my whole summer basically planned out I would have tried to stay on board and sail as a volunteer for the summer, I enjoyed it that much. The crew was full of super friendly, quirky, hilarious, and down to earth people from all walks of life, and much bullshitting and joking around was to be had in the boathouse during watches, on the deck pulling ropes and setting sails, in the galley cooking meals, up in the rigging on the masts of the ship tying up the sails not in use, the list goes on. I really hope that's not the last time I get to go sailing, I think the time I had on the ship pretty much got me addicted.
Anyway, that's about all for now! I've got one day in Aberdeen, and I'm meeting up with Jessie in about four hours! We'll be spending the night here, and then heading down to Edinburgh for another two days. She'll be flying back after that, and I'll be taking the train up to the Isle of Skye in Northern Scotland to do a little hiking! Look up some pictures of the Old Man of Storr. That's my goal for that part of the trip, and there's a lot of other awesome hiking to be done on the island.
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