The beginning of September can be, to borrow from Dickens, the best and worst of times. Those of us still in school – students, teachers, parents and guardians, and administrators – find ourselves scrambling to prepare as best we can for whatever the year ahead might bring. In quiet moments, though, our attention switches focus, turning back to the year that was. It was during one of these quiet moments in the last weekend of August that I recalled one Floatie’s brilliant idea from this past school year: “Let’s burn the Alex.”
It was April 17th. We had left Bremerhaven and the Alexander von Humboldt-II four days before and were settling into our new short-term home in Switzerland. Life had regained a semblance of normalcy: the floors stayed put underneath us; we could move further than 60 meters away from each other; and classes, including Sociology of Community (SoCo), had resumed. But something was off, and it took a few days to figure out what it was.
Four days before, the morning of our disembarkation from the Alex was a blur of activity, confusion, emotion, and organized chaos. We had to leave by 08:30 so that we would reach our destination before our bus driver was legally required to stop working. At the same time that Class Afloat was leaving, a new complement of DSST crew were embarking. Sea bags and hugs moved through the ship, from her depths to her deck, passing from one set of arms to another. Old friends exchanged greetings; new friends exchanged goodbyes. Time flew. We had to go. We packed the bus. We weren’t ready but off we drove. We watched the Alex grow smaller and smaller as we rode away from her for the last time, straining to keep her in sight as long as we possibly could.
And then we were in Switzerland. The air was sweet. The mountains were awesome. The food was delicious. The freedom was exhilarating.
Still, something was off.
It took four days for the novelty of being back on land to wear off. When it did, I was finally able to dig into that off feeling. I thought back to our last six months on the ship.
The Alex had been our home for half a year. We had spent time “at home” on the Alex for more consecutive days and more consecutive hours than we normally did in our land-life homes. The hum of the engines, the smell of the ropes, the rhythm of life at sea had become the sound, the smell, the rhythm of our lives. She had been more than just our home: she had been our workplace, our mall, our coffee shop, our classroom, our gym, our theatre, our park, our town hall… for those six months, the Alex had been our whole world. When we left on April 13th, we left that world behind forever. This was what was off. We had experienced a loss of such magnitude, a loss that we hadn’t yet had a chance to name, let alone process.
I thought again of how rushed – how unceremonious – our departure from the ship itself had been. We hadn’t properly said goodbye to her, and the abruptness of our departure felt like it minimized the importance of the Alex and those six months we had spent onboard. Now we were a world away in Switzerland, and it was all just over. If only we had been able to say goodbye… but how do you bid farewell to a floating hunk of metal, canvas, and rope in a way that feels meaningful rather than silly?
We needed ceremony and ritual.
The morning of the 17th, I presented the problem to the Floaties in SoCo class. Together, we worked through the concept of ceremonies and rituals: when they occur; what functions they serve; why they’re important for both individuals and communities; what elements are common across cultures. I asked them if our time on the Alex deserved a ceremony: if we should have done something to mark our departure from the Alex. Unanimous yes.
“What should we do?”
“Let’s burn the Alex.”
“Tell me more.”
The Floaties ran with it from there, with half of them taking over the design and implementation of the ceremony (shout-out to SoCo periods 1 and 3!). Their original plan was far more elaborate, but eventually they settled on this:
- Everyone, Floaties and faculty, would gather about an hour before sunset to have their faces painted. One half of a face would be painted using the colour associated with the person’s Semester One watch, the other half using the colour of their Semester Two watch.
- The group would part in half, creating a central aisle for the five Semester Two Floaties to walk up. The Master of Ceremonies from Semester One’s watch reveal would finish marking their faces with paint.
- The model of the Alex would be brought up the aisle.
- Each person would take a slip of paper and write on it a memory from their time on the Alex that they wished to forget. They would then put the paper on the model.
- The model Alex would be placed on the fire pit to burn, taking all the bad memories with her.
- Everyone would share their favourite memories from their time on the Alex while roasting and eating marshmallows.
The design team was very intentional with their choices: the burning of the Alex marked both a beginning and an end – “Like a phoenix,” they said; s’mores would be a literal sweet way to end the ceremony; and they even incorporated the music and face-paint elements from the faculty-organized watch reveal that happened near the beginning of first semester to reinforce the sense of both continuity and completion. They were also quick, putting the whole thing together in just four days (remarkable when you consider that most provisions were at least 30 minutes and an 80-euro taxi ride away).
On April 20th, a little after 19:00, we began to gather. Within half an hour, everyone’s faces had been transformed by patterns of paint and giant grins. And then, the strangest thing happened. When the design team directed us to form the central aisle, everyone became solemn. When the model Alex was brought down the aisle, a hush fell over us. It was eerie how quiet we were as we committed our bad memories to paper and then placed them on the Alex. When the model Alex was laid on the fire, the only sound was the crackling of the flames as they consumed the ship.
The silence was finally broken by one of the design team Floaties sharing a favourite memory from our time on the Alex, followed by another Floatie, then another… We acknowledged each speaker’s contribution with an appreciative “awwwwww” or with laughter, or both. Sticks and marshmallows made their way around. Soon we were laughing not only at the great memories we were sharing but also at the flaming marshmallow tragedies befalling the clumsy among us. Night fell, and Floaties began to drift away. A small group of about a dozen braved the growing cold, huddling around the dying fire for an impromptu singalong, watched over by a scattering of stars twinkling in the inky sky: the same stars we had gazed on every night during watch as we circumnavigated the northern Atlantic.
The flames that night consumed the 2024-25 Class Afloat crew’s unique version of a life onboard: our own little Alex-verse. Burning the Alex became our way of saying goodbye to her, but as I wrote earlier, she had been more than just a ship for us. Our Floaties created the ceremony we needed to let ourselves grieve what we had lost, celebrate all we had gained, and allow ourselves to start the process of moving on. As the new Floatie crew prepares to embark on their version of the adventure, I wonder if they’re worried about the year ahead the way we were when we first arrived in Germany last September. I hope someone tells them that the community they create will get them through anything the waves can toss at them. I wish them an incredible journey with fair winds, following seas, and five words of reassurance: you have all you need.
