With that done, and thanks Jo (our first aid instructor), it was time to be split into our crews for the week. And meet our skippers and mates (the crazy professional sailors prepared to take out a bunch of amateurs on a racing yacht!)
Well me met the crazy individuals who were going to try and turn us into ocean racers… (Well baby steps eh!!) Dirk and Al (Skipper and Executive Officer respectively), two very tall gents from the N/E of England. To be honest I was thoroughly intimidated by them both but I also had the feeling that I was in safe hands! The two of them were to prove me right on one feeling and very wrong on the other. As I’m still here I will let you work out which was right and wrong.
After a whistle stop tour of above and below decks (including more strange words for things that I have ever encountered before), allocation of our Henri Lloyd wet weather gear and our bunks there was just enough light left in the day for and introduction to mother watch (more on that later) and a bit of knot practice. If you were wondering what is the knot to know… The Bowline! This is the ultimate sailing knot. Get it right and you start to look like you belong on a boat, get it wrong (as we all did on numerous occasions and you feel like you will never make it as a sailor.) By the end of the week we all could tie that know behind our backs, upside down and with our eyes shut. And trust me you need to be able to do it in all those situations! (oh, Dirk and Al.. I’m still practicing them so I don’t forget!) So after some food it was eventually bed time, Shattered but with so much going round in my head, sleep did not come easy that first night but it did and so for the first time ever I went to bed on a racing yacht!
Well, at last a blog update with something interesting. My Part 1 training…..
Well this was the first time I had set foot on a sailing yacht and what a week it would be. Before however was the small matter of a day of first aid.
This is no ordinary first aid though. The tagline went…. “in space no one can hear you scream” well in the middle of the Southern Ocean in a storm help is a long way away… perhaps only days if you are lucky! With that in mind although the principles of saving lives and mending people are the same the limitations of what you can do are sobering to say the least terrifying is more like it. The long and short is that if something goes seriously wrong then there is only so much you can do. The rest is in the lap of the gods! (the fact that we had to discuss how to store a body on board was not one you will forget in a hurry) However all was not doom and gloom and the 18 other Clipper 11/12 crew I had just met still managed a cheery attitude mainly due to the jokes (most of which I was the butt of) and the comment that most of the need for first aid is down to stupidity and complacency. Looking around the room everyone looked quite sensible (if you can call anyone who wants to sail around the world sensible) and after a day of first aid no one felt complacent!!
Sorry Blog readers (if I have any) I have been working so hard to try and secure funds for the race that I have not had any blogging time! I will though get one done by this weelend with a full update of my current situation and my part 1 training!
Speak soon, James