The Voyage: Friday November 13

Position: 49°28'48.05"N 0°10'37.59"E

We were full of anticipation about our impending departure. Down the Seine towards Rouen.

We explored the boat and stared into the port and the docks, and started another of our projects: music. Each of us brought three songs from the sea, and over the course of our journey we will share them and try to play them. The instruments we brought on board are: two accordions, a set of harmonicas, a sitar, a ukulele, a guitar, two clarinets, a heligonka and 8 voices. Enough for a lot of noise.
We listened to 6 songs and tried to play some of them.
In between Kjell did some interviews asking us all about our biggest fears around this journey, and what our hopes are for the performance we will make after this.

Over lunch we were told Rouen was off, and they'd let us know when they had further news. It felt quite strange and almost incomprehensible that one of the stops had just been taken off the list. Was there no cargo in Rouen? Not enough cargo? Will we get to the Caribbean faster?
No one seemed to be able or willing to tell us. In all fairness, there was a lot of movement on board, so I guess some of them had no answers either and the others were simply to busy to come and answer all of our question. We are guests on this ship, their main goal is to get the cargo to its destination, and we're just in it for the ride. So we tried to be patient (which is hard when you're over-excited).

Everyone is slightly worried about sea-sickness, me included.

At 4pm we start to move. We ask someone what's happening and he says we're moving to another dock, two miles away. For about two hours being on a moving boat is incredibly exciting, but once we realise we're only really going around the corner, we're also slightly disappointed. But our time will come. Soon.
Again, it's not clear why we've moved around the corner from the Quai d'Amérique to Quai d'Europe. Maybe our cargo is there? Maybe another vessel needed the parking space?

We retire back into our Recreation Room, and get a visit from the First Officer. He tells us we need to be more careful with playing music as people work in shifts and some of them sleep underneath our space. (From now on I will refer to 'The Owner's Recreation Room' as our living room. Less words, you know. I have a lot of catching up to do. (There, I've wasted more extra words with the excuse for simplification).

(As I am writing this I am watching Tom and Dave in the swimming pool on Deck E - our deck - but that's getting ahead of things, because as I am writing this it is actually November 22. As I am posting this I am in my flat back in Berlin, and the whole trip seems like a dream. Confused yet?)

We had another very filling dinner and watched 'The perfect storm' (in my humble opinion: a perfectly rubbish film). The one great thing about the film was that it got us all worried about storms.