June 25, 2013
Tuesday 25 June 2013: Transportation day
Today was my last day at the expedition. We travelled from Åhus in southern Sweden to Stockholm to take the ferry to the Åland islands where our manager for the Copenhagen office, Hanna Paulomäki, took over and led the Finnish part of the expedition. It was decided to leave early in the morning as we needed to be in the port for the ferry at 3.00 p.m. as we had almost 700 kms to drive. So we aimed to start at 7:00 a.m., but we were welcomed by an almost flat tire on the trailer in the morning. The morning therefore started with a change of tires and Gorka, Ruben and I heading north trying to find a workshop that could fix the flat tire. We were lucky and found a garage that fixed it in 30 minutes while we had breakfast.
The journey went smooth, I even had time to do some work on my laptop on the way and reflect the Swedish part of the expedition. Below follows a summary of my experience:
The Spanish diving and filming crew is super professional, I really enjoyed working with them and we became good friends. Despite all the challenges we faced during the trip (finding the diving spots, the places to launch the boat, etc) everyone kept up a good spirit throughout the journey and things went very smooth. Not even one day the activities were cancelled due to practical problems. We worked long days from early in the morning until bedtime, but it was fun. We even had time for a few running and swimming sessions with the crew coordinator Jesus Molino, an avid athlete, a little guitar playing with Claus Koch, the diving coordinator, and some interesting policy and campaigning discussions under the sun with Xavier.
This is my last entry in the diary. Now it is time for me to step off the coastal expedition and do some campaigning in the Stockholm area for the Race for The Baltic campaign, before going back to the office next week for the normal report writing and the usual work with decision makers to improve our oceans´ management.