If you're in Amsterdam, check out Rob Wigboldus Fishmonger. They've got amazing herring there.

As for me, I'll wander around the city a bit more in this lovely drizzle and strong wind, then head home :)

A ticket controller booth in Amsterdam. Right inside the tram o.O

Hooray. We've arrived in Amsterdam!

Every port has equipped showers and washing machines. It's basically a whole infrastructure for getting cleaned up.

Access is by code, which gets radioed to the ship (or given in person after docking). If you know the code, everything's free. Apparently, you can sometimes find out the code at the cafe that's usually nearby.

But mooring the ship itself costs money. They charge our boat 130€ per day at the Amsterdam port. Not cheap.

This is what sailing looks like in calm weather with a good following wind. The ship hardly pitches, responds well to the helm, everything's smooth.

During our night watch it was a completely different story: it's dark, visibility is zero, there's pouring rain, lightning flashing, huge waves, wind gusts constantly pushing the ship off course, and the helm response is often super slow or doesn't come at all (currents and wind throw in their own adjustments).

In bad weather, the cost of a mistake goes up too: drifting off course makes the pitching worse, and if you catch the wind at the wrong angle, you can even damage the sails. Plus it's harder to get back on the right course afterwards.

With modern navigation it's so much easier: the autopilot does everything for you :)

Sometimes seasickness strikes during the crossing. According to statistics, about 20-25% of people are unlucky enough to get it. There are pills, but they supposedly don't help much. In our team, only 2 people actually turned completely green.

The best way to feel better is to head up on deck and look at the horizon. Balance games (in the video you can see people trying to make each other lose their balance) also help quite a bit.

The ship has 3 watch shifts with 4 people each (sometimes more). Each watch is on duty for 4 hours every 8 hours (but that doesn't mean they do nothing the rest of the time :) ). A watch shift involves steering the ship on course when it's underway.

On top of that, you either have to scrub the deck, or clean everything inside the ship, or spend the whole day in galley slavery cooking for the whole crew. These duties rotate in a cycle. And the watch shift itself doesn't get cancelled. Today it's our turn to cook 🙈