Madalena is a tough seventeen-year-old who is forced to take on her father's ferry business after he dies. She has her many brothers and sisters to support, and there is no one else to do the job. So she rallies her defenses and sets out to give her rival in the ferry business a run for his money. But at the same time, the rival's handsome son is starting to look better and better. Madalena refuses to acknowledge her feelings for him -- though how long she can sustain that denial is the question.

This documentary film portrays five captains. It shows their everyday life on board, and how they fulfill their duties and make decisions. But it goes far beyond: Viewers get to know the captains as people with values, as human beings that also deal with topics such as family and home. The captains' stories tell a lot more than about life at sea. The narrative style is documentary in the classical sense: It is only the captains who speak, there is no voiceover. Their own words and the pictures let viewers gain a very close insight into the captains' lives. Hamburg, the German port known as "gate to the world", creates the cinematic parenthesis of this documentary. All captains portrayed have a close relation to Hamburg - they live or work there or come to Hamburg with their ships every now and then.