Page 2

2
days after leaving Port Victoria, I neither washed, undressed, combed
my hair nor used my towels but just laid in my bunk mostly, expecting
& hoping to do. Yet the weather has not been rough but just a
bit choppy at times; sunny at times, cloudy at times, & mostly cool to
cold. When we are on duty at night we dress & lay in our bunks
ready if wanted & I have [crossed out] hour's lookout sometimes 2, each night
The others have an hour at the wheel also as I will, when I learn to
steer. During the day we do odd jobs like chipping rust etc; not
very hard altho' any exertion has been hard for me up till now.
Our crew consists of 2 Australians, 2 Englishmen, 3 Germans, 4 Finns
2 Estonians and 7 Swedes or Swedish-Finns - the latter come from
Aland (pronounced Oland) a small island up in the Baltic Sea where
most of these sailing ships finally anchor & call "home". I'm hoping
we'll get to England in time for me to get to that conference for this way
takes much longer than the Horn, 83 days is the record for the latter (held
by the Parma in 1933 when Alan J. Villiers the author sailed on her) & 98 days
is the record for the Hope. We are fighting against west winds all the
time which would soon take us to Cape Horn if we were going that
way - however as I said the captain doesn't consider the ships strong
enough to take the weight of water & I'm just as pleased for, the cold
would be terrible down there they say this way is not too bad, for
weather. I should get some good photos on this trip altho' goodness knows
when I'll get them printed & developed. I'm trying to get 1 of an albatross,
the birds known as "guardian of the west winds" - their size is amazing
& they often fly quite close. The captain & mates amuze themselves with rifles
trying to shoot them but have only scored 1 hit in many hundreds of shots.