Do you remember Jonas at Sea?

Whales spotted • Dolphins spotted • Compostela de Santiago • Fantastic starry sky • Made first 3 schooltests • First laundry done (after 3 weeks. ‘it doesn’t smell so good in our cabin, because I had put a wet towel in my laundry bag the second day’) • Arrival at Tenerife

The farewell

The adventure has begun! After a tour of the Thalassa and an impromptu performance, the microphone sounded, “You may say goodbye now, we’ll see you on the boat in 10 minutes. Gulp! After lots of kind words and big hugs, Jonas, to the applause of all present, stepped aboard the ship that will be his home for the next 6 months. Another 5 minutes of waving to the shore and then they walked below deck.

For the first week they stayed docked in Harlingen to put in all the stores (provisions) and for extensive safety instructions. And on Oct. 21, Jonas’ sister Maartjes birthday, they sailed out.

Handing in his phone

Upon arrival at the ship, Jonas not only had to hand in his luggage, but also his cell phone. ‘Part of the deal’ is that he is only allowed to use his phone briefly in some ports and not otherwise. Those are the moments when he can send us some pictures (if there is a fast food restaurant with wifi nearby) or make a quick (video) call.

The Route

A few days after leaving, the captain chose to let a storm pass by in the lee of Margate, England. On twitter, curious locals wrote about the pirate ship anchored off their coast for a few days, haha. Then they were able to sail quietly through the channel. Well you quietly … this is one of the busiest sea routes, sort of like Giethoorn but with container ships.

Then they sailed through the Bay of Biscay towards Spain. Because they had a strong headwind, they motored for large parts of the journey. They tried to sail here and there but it was not easy. They even tore a mainsail, but a replacement was already waiting for them on Tenerife, Jonas said. In Spain they spent a few days in the port of A Coruna. There they made an excursion to the pilgrimage site of Compostela de Santiago.

Today they arrived in the port of Santa Cruz in Tenerife. We have a group app ‘the SAS chatterbox’ with all the parents and in it they immediately shared the webcam of the port. So we could see the Thalassa sail in nicely and secretly hope to catch a glimpse of Jonas.

You can see where the Thalassa is via Navalvesseltraffic.com. Photoshopped together all the screenshots from the past few weeks gives a good idea of the route, see below.

500 woorden

In addition to the sporadic phone calls, we are in touch through a weekly digital correspondence. Every Monday Jonas gets to put 500 words in a txt file in a dropbox, max 4 KB, no pictures or videos. And every Wednesday we get to put 500 words for him in the dropbox.