News from the Newcombes (October 2004)
Strangely, life on board the Anastasis seemed normal very quickly. Our cabin is just like a little house. We have a small room for the children, with bunk beds and a single as well as a small lounge/bedroom for us with a bed settee. There’s a place for us to eat in our cabin, so we usually fetch breakfast from the dining room and eat together in our cabin. We eat our other meals with about a hundred others in one of the ship’s main dining rooms.
We’ve also got a shower & toilet; the toilet is strictly liquids only since it draws in sea water and empties straight back to where it came from. Sometimes there’s no hot water, sometimes there’s no cold water either, sometimes there’s no electricity, and whilst sailing to Dundee, the main engines packed up for a very tense five minutes…this ship’s seen better days.
Whilst here in Germany, the main boiler has blown up! We can manage without hot water, but since the boiler heats the fuel before it can be burnt, we need to get it fixed. But God’s put this ship in the right place at the right time. As you look off the portside, about twenty metres away is a factory that makes ship boilers! All we have to do now is find the £20,000 that we need to pay for it.
School is from 8:15 to 3:20 and continues even through the roughest of sails. The school is located towards the aft and so when the ship is pitching, it rides up and down by up to four metres…I tried teaching a computer class, but the students were soon lying on the floor feeling sick! It seemed almost surreal when, sailing through the North Sea with nothing to be seen in any direction, the sun was beating down and we were playing basketball on the aft deck… just a normal break time?
After school the children play with friends and there are always plenty of them close at hand. The climbing frame, roller hockey and go kart are always popular ways of killing time; we’ve even put in a spot of fishing (could be worth trying whilst in the open sea?)
We even have a few pets in our cabin too – 5 guppies in a fish tank (but don’t tell the captain or they’ll have to go).
We are glad to report that the seasickness medicine works…it does leave you feeling pretty dopey though (yeah, “what’s new” eh?). We experienced a very rough 36 hour sail from Scotland to Germany. A twenty one degree roll might not sound much, but it was enough that fridges, TVs and computer monitors which were tied down ended up being thrown across rooms. Some people even reported being thrown out of their beds. When the ship really got rolling at 3a.m. we could hear furniture on the move and glass and dishes smashing all over the ship. Being the irresponsible, fun loving sort, we all thought it was great fun! It’s a good job we’d done the ‘abandon ship’ practise.
Here’s the itinerary so you know where in the world we are:
19 Aug: Joined the Anastasis at Rotterdam shipyard
20-30 Aug: Scheveningen, Holland – PR phase
30 – 8 Sept: Rotterdam – PR phase, World harbour days, school starts
9-20 Sept: Dundee – loading and PR phase
Now ‘till 12 Oct: Bremerhaven, Germany – Main loading phase
18-24 Oct: Tenerife – After the first half term and a 5 day sail we get a week off.
1 Nov – 28 Feb: Cotonou, Benin – Outreach
28 Feb-8 Mar: Transition between outreaches
10 Mar- 17 June: Monrovia, Liberia – Outreach
17 – 29 June: Sailing to South Africa
29 June to ???: South Africa |
Thanks for all your interest, prayers, emails & financial support which have helped to make this possible. Please keep praying for us all and for this old rusty heap which is soon to be changing the lives of some of the world’s neediest people.
Living more slowly and simply with much less ‘stuff’, having friends around all the time and not doing the cooking all contribute to us enjoying ship life enormously. And its great the way that the view from our porthole changes.
You can find out more and get some great photos of the ship on www.mercyships.org
Please keep in touch steve.newcombe@mercyships.org
Missing you all,
Steve, Rachel, Kathryn, Michael & Daniel Newcombe | 