On a ship with a 50 person crew everything is a bit different to home. For example, someone has to prepare the meals. That is the job of the galley duty. Galley duty starts at six o’clock, so you have to get up at half past five. First we prepare fruit salad and cut bread for breakfast. Half a fruit for each person. Then we have to prepare the tables, because at 7.20 am the first persons come to have breakfast. The mess stewards serve the crew. As soon as the breakfast is finished we clean the dishes and start to prepare lunch.
Since Tenerife we eat bread at lunch, because it is very hot at that time. Therefore the dinner is a warm meal. My favorite meals were Rumpsteak and Käsespätzle.
One of the best things is that you can listen to music while working in the galley. The galley is the only room on board where you are allowed to listen to loud music. The music taste of each person is very different, so we listen to music like Fresh D, Santiano, Alexander Markus, Tomorrow Land and Wise Guys.
After lunch we start to prepare coffee and cake. Now and then the mess stewards clean all the dishes or clean the galley. There is always something to do at galley duty. A very nice work is to prepare the warm meal, because it’s a lot of fun to cut the vegetables, to mix soups, to roast meat or to heat potatoes. After the dinner the hardest part of the galley duty starts. The dishes, the roaster, the oven, the stove and the machine to cut bread have to be cleaned. There is also a daily job which has to be done. For example, every Wednesday all the cupboards have to get cleared, cleaned and filled again. At least the two drain bells have to get cleaned. At that time it smells like drain. That’s not so yummy. After everything is done, the head of watch four comes to inspect the galley.
When everything is OK, we are all happy and get ready to play our last song. Nearly every day we play this one song after galley duty. Therefore some more people than the mess stewards come to celebrate this moment with us. That’s 59 seconds full volume and best atmosphere. It’s the Pokemon theme song we listen to. After that, we often go into the cool pool called “Fatu Hiva”, the name of an island Thor Heyerdahl arrived on his first expedition. Then we take a shower, because we are allowed to do that after every galley duty. Then the mess stewards can go to bed.
Finally I can say that galley duty is one of the hardest jobs on board. But when the meals were good and everybody liked it, the galley duty can also be the funniest and best job.