In June, I had the chance to go on leg 3 of GGUK's Tall Ship voyage, a 100 day voyage round the UK on a Tall Ship
I travelled up to Aberdeen, spent the night in a hotel, then dropped off my bags to spend the day in Aberdeen. At 4pm, I headed to the ship, and met the other watch leaders. We spent the night relaxing, before doing the 10-2am harbour watch. I took the first part of this. Just before, we were briefed by the crew, and it seemed there was an awful lot of alarms to watch out for!
The following day, we had our final briefings, and then met our watches! My watch, Forward Port, was the first to be allowed to board. Once down in the lower mess, the chaos started! My watch were shown to their bunks, then stood in a queue to sign on collect their harnesses, oilies and wellies.
Once everyone was signed on, everyone assembled in the lower mess for our briefings from the permanent crew. Captain Clare showed us where we were to be sailing, and suddenly the voyage was very, very real!
One of the first things we had to do was an evacuation drill. As a WL, I had to be part of the evacuation team, assembling at the bottom of the mess stairs along with two designated members of my watch, and three people from the other forward watch. The other two watches manned the bar staircase. The alarm was sounded, everyone else headed to their muster stations, and we evacuated one of the two wheelchair users, using a pulley to drag the wheelchair backwards up the stairs. Once this was done we were dismissed and joined our watches, but there can be up to eight wheelchair users on board, so this would have to be repeated until everyone was out.
After this, we got the chance to go aloft! Our harnesses were checked, we were shown how to climb, and we headed up! We were not fastened on climbing up the rigging, and this was scary. Near the top, there was an overhang, and we did have to clip on to climb over this bit. I was terrified as I went up that, and really wanted to go back down again, but Lesley, the BM, encouraged me, and I made it! Once everyone was on the platform, we were shown how to climb out onto the yards (the sails). I was the second person to climb up, but no matter what I did, I wasn’t able to balance myself properly, and didn’t have the strength in my arms to pull myself upright. I admitted defeat and climbed back down. Once everyone was up, though, I decided to try again, when I was in the middle and didn’t have to climb out to the end, and managed it fine that time. We then had to get the mesh sail in, then climb back down. Going back down was as scary as going up, especially as I got cramp in my foot! Luckily I was still fastened on at that point. We then learned how to brace the sails, which seemed very confusing at that point, and I wondered how on earth I would remember it all!
The following morning, everyone got ready to set off! We were all in place, but unfortunately, there was a delay! But eventually we were off. We headed out of the harbour, and straight into a bad swell when heading up the coast... And it didn’t take long for people to succumb! I was unfortunately one of those who was seasick. I should have been on watch in the evening, but in the end was sent to bed instead. This did mean I missed the Fraserborough life boat coming to play. The anchor was dropped at midnight to stabilise the ship to help those of us who were ill, and also as we had half watches turning up!
We had a two night stop in Edinburgh part way through our voyage. Whilst it would have been nice to have continued sailing, the vast majority of people on our voyage were aged 14-16 (JST’s usual minimum age is 16), so the stop was necessary as they were getting tired. It also meant we had chance to practise coming alongside before our final stop in Newcastle. As a WL, I was part of the team controlling the mooring lines, which definitely needed muscles. At one point, we were told to ‘heave harder’ – so I did. And slipped! I ended up sitting on the deck, the line above my head, still pulling on it!The following morning it was a lot calmer, and we were all feeling a lot better. We set off, and spent the day sailing. Subsequent days were the same – setting sails and going aloft, on watch, happy hour at 10am to clean the ship, a few assisted climbs so that those unable, or unwilling to climb up the rigging on their own had the chance as well, attached to a rope. On watch, we had two people on lookout, and one at the helm. Sometimes keeping the ship in a straight line was nice and easy, but not always! Sometimes, we could go for a whole four hour watch and see nothing else around us. We made it a third of the way to Norway, where we were well and truly out of mobile range. We also had to log the speed, bearing and weather hourly. Overnight watches could be tough. 8-12am wasn’t too bad as you knew you could get a fair amount of sleep after. We only did one of these whilst sailing, and at 11pm, as we were starting to flag, we were given a tour of the chart room. This also helped us to understand what was happening on the ship, and what everything is for. 12-4am were definitely the worst, as you either went to bed and got a very small amount of sleep before, or stayed awake, but then really started to feel tired mid watch. These were the coldest watches too, and at one point I was wearing SEVEN layers and was still cold! There were things to break it up, though, such as the wind dropping so much we dropped to just half a knot an hour. We had to get an engineer out of bed at 3am to put the engines on, and then had to put the sailed away, which also warms you up nicely.
Towards the end, we lost another day’s sailing thanks to the wind going from not strong enough to too strong! We anchored in a bay, and carried out anchor watch, where we were ‘entertained’ by people on the beach waving fire at us! Before this, we had to sea stow the sails. I realised that climbing up in Aberdeen had been a doddle when it was calm and the ship wasn’t moving!
It was sad to arrive in Newcastle, as that meant our voyage was over. It was ten amazing days, and something I really want to repeat. I now know what to do with the sails, what everything means, which at the beginning, I never imagined I would. I’m so glad I went for it and applied!
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