ESN Sea Adventure 2010

For one weekend in the beginning of May, I went on a pretty cool sailing trip on the Polish Dąbie Lake and the Baltic Sea. I have never been truly sailing on a bigger sail boat before so it was interesting for me to experience what it was like. The most tiring part, I think, was getting to Szczecin by train. We took a night train, but instead of a sleeper car, eight of us were all sitting in a normal car for 10 hours through the night. Thankfully, a girl we had met on the train had brought 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea which she kindly let me read so I wasn’t so bored.

After barely sleeping on the train, we had made it to a small port in Szczecin called Marina Pogoń. There we packed our three separate boats, some people went shopping to stock up provisions, and I just sat around in the sun waiting and playing the card game Mafia with some of the girls who were attending the trip. Our skipper, Ula, made us have a boat meeting before we started where she split up tasks, and I ended up having to cook two of the days and clean the boat one of the days. The cabins on the boat were quite small, but I think spacious enough considering eight people had to fit on it. I shared a room with my roommate from Piast Dormitories. Finally, we were off to the Polish part of the journey which consisted of Dąbie Lake and channels. We were in channels most of the first day, so that meant that we were under engine power. We did, however sail for a little bit, but only using the main sail. That night, we stopped in our first port in Poland where some of the crew made a nice dinner of pasta and sauce. The showers at the port only had cold water, so very few people actually took showers. The most memorable part of the port were the people we ran into there which were three Poles in a small, music blasting motor boat; a teenage boy, a young twenty-something girl, and another mid-twenties guy. Only the older guy knew how to speak English and he was very interesting.

So to have a good time, we walk over to the boat so see what was going on. There the people were very friendly and poured us drinks of a good amount of vodka and grapefruit juice. They asked us to get in their boat, which was weird, in order to take a group photo. Then they wanted us to party more with them by going to another port twenty minutes away. I obviously said no because the guy had been drinking, and I decided to go hang out with other people from the crew. Stories I later heard from the people who hung out with the Poles at our port were that when they walked into the town they bought some weed randomly from a guy just riding around on his bike. Then they walked back to their boat where they smoked it in a water pipe, and I think he even threw hot coals from it on the ground of the boat. I myself, spent that night playing American drinking games like Kings and Asshole because there were American medical students on some of the other boats that could help explain.

The next morning, we left pretty early after I had to make breakfast consisting of cereal, kanapki (sandwiches), and tea/coffee. After cleaning, up we were on our way to Germany. I slept a lot of the day while on the boat, but I made sure to wake up when we crossed the Polish-German boarder which was not that impressive ever since people don’t need passports to go from country to country and there is no border check. Then I slept until we caught up with one of the other boats that was a sail boat meant for the sea and a keel that could not be pulled up. It had gotten stuck on shallow water and we had to help free it. We freed it by moving all of our people from our boat to their boat and leaning all to one side while our boat used its motor to pull. After a few tries, we got them freed. Then we ran into a draw bridge that would not be going up for a few hours so we had to lower the mast and pass under. While we were lowering it, a rope snapped or a knot came undone, so that the mast can crashing down. Good thing the guy holding the rope was short or else we would have had a serious problem. It was also raining while we passed under the bridge and the sun was shining on the other side which created an amazing full-double rainbow. I had to make dinner while we were in the channel on our way to the port, so I made sweet and sour chicken with rice. It was simple and easy, but we had run out of water so we had to wait until the port to clean dishes. Once we arrived late at night to Germany, me and the guy who was also making dinner took the dishes to the bathroom and washed them. Then we had to fill the boat with fresh water which was a chore. There was no hose near the boat, so we had to fill buckets and empty water bottles with water and carry them a long distance. Once that was all over I went to sleep.

We left from Germany relatively early. We got to pass by a port called Peenemunde that was famous for missiles and u-boats. It was cool to see and we actually saw a soviet submarine docked in the port. I don’t know if it was just a museum or if it was an actual functioning ship.

Finally, we got to sail on the Baltic to the Polish town of Świnoujście. The trip took a little while because the wind was not that strong and we couldn’t use the motor since we used up a lot of gas rescuing the other boat. Ula said the reason why the wind was bad was because Neptune was angry with us. She said that it was because we had girls on the ship and that we would have to throw one off to appease Neptune. Also, another nautical legend says that if a virgin tickled the base of mast of the ship, then it was supposed to bring better winds. Finally, it was suggested that we needed to appease Neptune by giving him vodka, so Ula poured a little of the vodka we had into the ocean. It didn’t work immediately, but later in the day we had good winds.

At Świnoujście, some interesting things went down. We had dinner in a market near the Baltic Sea and I had fried trout (pstrąg) with fries and salad. After, we walked on the beach which was actually very nice and had big sandy beaches with small cafes built right on the beach. Me and one of the girls took our shoes off and walked into the ocean, which was not that cold compared to the air. We tried to run on the beach, but the beer we had with dinner soon made us turn back. On the walk back to the sail boats, we stopped by an open air restaurant where we heard music. It was Disco Polo genre music being played. I think the song was Jesteś Szalona and tons of old people were dancing their hearts out. Once I got back to the port, I immediately took a shower which required the purchase of special coins. I bought two coins for a total of 10 minutes which I guess only gave me 5 minutes when I put both coins in the machine… it was miserable.

We had a huge adventure trying to find a club or bar at night. After going to a few clubs that were empty and expensive, we had to walk for about an hour and a half until we found some local bar called Piwnica. The outside looked like a suburban house, but the inside was like a dungeon type feel with bear pelts on the walls and candles dripping with wax. The people there all seemed local, but one guy especially was looking to fight people. We all called him the Guitar Hero guy because he was wearing a shirt with a big guitar on it. The guy was standing on a platform and drunkenly dancing just waiting for a person to make eye contact with him. Luckily, we all successfully ignored him, however at the end of the night there was a drunk guy who came to our table and started chatting to us in Polish. As we were all getting kicked out, since the place was closing, the drunk guy couldn’t find his cell phone and accused one of us of stealing it. We didn’t want trouble, so we immediately booked it out of there. After we had walked a few blocks away, the drunk guy had come charging after us. The drunk guy wanted us to come back to the club and look for his cell phone because the people had kicked him out and wouldn’t open the doors. The first mate of our boat took care of him and just told him that if he had a problem he could come back to the port with us, but the guy eventually gave up yelling. Sleep was much needed that night.

The final morning we made our way back to Szczecin. That day, the winds were strong and the waters were wavy. Everyone tried to stay out on the deck to avoid seasickness, however two people succumbed. Ula said that the first person to throw up on the boat is called the prezes, which means leader in Polish. Michael made the bad decision to go into the cabin and got seasick. He threw up over the side of the boat and we all couldn’t help to laugh at him just because everyone was feeling the same way. The second guy to through up was Pablo. He went down into the cabin for some reason and ended up leaning on the galley table. He was asked to move and get a cell phone for someone which ended up being his undoing. He threw up in the kitchen sink.

Eventually everyone but me and Ula fell asleep when the waters became calmer, and I was just helped her to sail the boat. Eventually, we made it back to the port in Szczecin. We all wanted to leave as soon as we got back in order to be back in Krakow, but we spent the night and waited until the next morning to take the train back. It was a relief to be back in Krakow. I really enjoyed the sailing trip, but I don’t know if it is something I will do that often. For the mean time, I think I will stick to my motor boat, kayak, and fishing.