special girls night out ;-)

Last night the ship had to be on anchor, since some container ships had to off/onload where we are berthed. At 5 o'clock the ship would sail just a couple of hundred meters outside the harbour and stay there overnight and come back at 6 am next morning and open the book fair again.
At 4.15 pm one of the girls from the crew told me that the captain had given permission to some of the crew members to go on shore before the ship would leave and stay on shore until 9 pm. At 9 pm he would then send a life boat to pick up the crew members!
There were only a few that could come, because of the limited space in the life boat ofcourse, so I immediately went up to the captain to ask if Marthe and I could go on shore. He asked Marthe if she thought she could climb up the ladder on the side of the ship, because that is where we had to climb up from the life boat ;-) Marthe thought she could do that, so the captain allowed her and me (and some others) off the ship!
But.... we had to be gone by 4.30!!! Which means that we, by the time finished talking to the captain, had 5 minutes left to get our stuff and get off the ship!
I quickly went downstairs to tell Herbert that we were going NOW (he already knew that we were maybe going and it wasn't a problem for him to stay on board with the boys and Bente), we grabbed our sunglasses and put on shoes that would be easier climbing up a ladder with, and off we went.
We were together with 4 other girls named Reka, Jan, Collette and Sharon.

We first walked around in town and bought a bottle of water, since only one of us had water with her and the rest hadn't had the time to think about taking water.
Then we sat on the shore side to see the ship leave ;-)
At 6 pm we went to a nice fish restaurant for dinner. In the background we saw the ship on anchor, nice view!
We took loads of pictures during the night, both nice, beautiful, funny and crazy pictures ;-)
So, at 9 pm, we were at the place we would be picked up. It was quite cool to be picked up by a life boat.
Johann, the 2nd mate, was in constant contact with the captain on the walkie talkie. The captain was a bit concerned, but everything went OK, except from the part where the life boat engine died 10 meters before we reached the stairs... hehe. But, with a rope thrown to us, we managed to get close enough to the ship to go up. By the way, we didn't have to climb the ladder, they had taken out the normal gangway. That was really cool... lot easier to go up and it looked really funny, a gangway on the side of the ship in the middle of the water ;-)

Today around lunch time we went to the beach with Collette (uk), Jan (usa), Conny (germany), Nico (germany), Hans (NL) and Kees (NL). Herbert had a day off from work, so we could all go together.
The beach was great. Lots of tourists, but still enough place for us to sit. The water was just so warm that it was like being in the bathtub.
We had a great time and even Herbert went in the water and that says enough ;-)

At around 4 pm Herbert had to be back on the ship to work in the finance office and tonight, after having the kids in bed, I helped out in the book fair.
We had a long line of people waiting to get on board to buy some books! It was very very crowded and extremely warm inside the book fair.
I first ran up and down with drinks for all the crew members working in there, and later I helped out putting the books back in the shelves. It's unbelievable how big a mess those people can leave behind!!
But, there were also to many people in the book fair at the same time. That makes it also very easy to steal unfortunately :-(

OK, time for bed!
Herbert is still in the finance office counting money, but I really need to go to bed now!

Goodnight