Okay, this week’s page is late again, because I spent the weekend doing heavy manual labour at the place which is actually supposed to be my studio that will save me from, among other things, my flatmate’s noisy door that makes me jump involuntarily if I’m deeply focused on something (which is kind of bad when I’m inking).

From now on I’ll post slightly larger pages, since I can’t seem to stop myself from drawing in much smaller scale than when I started this comic, 14 years ago.

Evening watch is from 8 PM to midnight. (That may not seem like staying up very late, but they get up before dawn, maybe at 6 AM or so.)
The other night watches are midnight watch, from midnight to 4 AM, and morning watch, from 4 to 8 AM. Aeron is on watch from 8 AM to 8 PM, with two 2 hour breaks that they call lunch watch and dinner watch. Willie, Seraphine, Samona and Shannon rotate on these five watches. Eva doesn’t stand on watch, because Shannon won’t trust her alone with the ship … It took a while before they would let Willie stand on watch, too.

Broad reach is when the ship is at a 90-180 degree angle towards the wind, which is the best angle for sailing.

Yeah, I try to do research on proper sailing terminology, but probably real sailors would just go WTF when they read this comic … I’m not even trying to give a realistic portrayal of sailing, okay? V`(oo)´V

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Speaking of Willie going back to Gateshead, I just realised that the story takes place right at the beginning of the big changes done to the Gateshead quayside, where among other things the Saltmeadows nieghbourhood, a huge scrapyard and a traveller’s site were torn down to make way for things like the Baltic Arts Centre, the Sage Gateshead International Centre for Music and the Gateshead Millennium Bridge. Argh, this is such an opportunity to show a bit of what it was like back then, if only I can find enough research material! The Gateshead council made extensive documentation of it, but the book and the video seem to be out of print now. Will I really have to go all the way there to view them in a library? At least part of the photos from the documentation project can be viewed here. Some other pre-changes photos can be seen at iSee Gateshead.
Also, it seems that the Chandless flats, which her neighbourhood is based on, will be torn down at some point now.