Companions in distress

…For most that went to sea, there must have been a reason.
Adventure, ideal or just for fun: work is work.

You did not have friends on board, just fellow sufferers.
Men who, in a nutshell, were stuck together for months and could work together.
Sailors of all kinds.

I sailed with a mate that wanted to sail on all kinds of ships.
His ideal was to sail once on a whaler.

Whaler ‘Willem Barendsz’.

Or with a chief engineer who managed to turn a cold store into a freezer cell and made even more strange inventions, so that the equipment in the engine room no longer turned properly.
He was understandably called ‘Gyro Gearloose’ and nobody knew his actual name.
The cook was not happy with that, he kept carrying his things back and forth.
Sometimes he founds engine parts in it that needed to be cold, while the other half were heating up on his stove.

Or with a driver who dreamed of owning his own ship one day and was therefore already probing here and there for a crew.

With an oilman who had still sailed on Murmansk.
Who, when he had a drink too much, relive the horrors again.
In the intoxication of two huts he made one.

With sparks who already became seasick when they got on board.

A sailor who really made a boat in a whisky bottle and for which I had to write love letters to his beloved in Malta.

Seamen who only wanted to sail on one particular ship.
They fell in love with that ship and considered it their home.
Then there were sailors who only wanted to work at night.

I stuck on and painted a model of my floating love.

The ‘Utrecht’ in her element.

A sailor had to comfort himself a lot.