Christmas Eve is upon us, but for some Christmas Eve will not be spent at home with family, but instead with a whole other family – the family onboard. I have spent many Christmas’ onboard, but one particular Christmas Eve stands out. Most of the crew were sound asleep. As you can probably imagine the 24th of December is a day just like any other – the ship still sails and work still needs to be done. So I don’t think that anyone expected this day to be much different than any other. But, the captain had a different idea.

Onboard the Ro-Ro ship we had a small forklift called Ingerd (named after a former student). It was irreplaceable for chain turns, stores, paint etc, but always in the way when the trailer deck was to be washed. So the new deck-intern had placed it on one of the deck's flaps. Unfortunately, the handbrake was not what it used to be so when loading started and the ship was swinging, it rolled over the flap and into the sea.