Sailing, fires and messing about on speed boats

Hi, well I'm back on dry land again after a varied and busy couple of weeks. Since my last update (yep, I know it's been a while again), I've spent 3 days in the radar simulator, a week on a Sigma 38 foot racing yacht, a week on a 40 foot catamaran, 2 days on a 26 foot keelboat, 3 days fire fighting and two days in powerboats. I've just started Long Range Radio today which I think is going to be a bit heavy.

The week on the Sigma was mainly spent doing some passages out to the East this time. We left Cowes and went to Ramsgate (just around the corner from the Thames), via Eastbourne. It took about 36 hours and I can safely tell you that the West Country is a lot more interesting than the eastern end of the Channel. The only real thing of notable interest was Dungeness nuclear power station which as you may be able to imagine is an extremely ugly building perched on a peninsula miles from anywhere. Apart from that we passed Brighton, Hove and Dover and played "dodge the cross channel ferry". I got seasick again and when stepping ashore in Ramsgate vowed to get the train back to Cowes and seriously reconsider my future. However, after a good night sleep proceeded by wholesome hot food, I was ready to go again. Oh, we did see a seal right inside Ramsgate harbour, he just seemed to have a look around and then head back out to sea, and I don't blame him - Ramsgate is a particularly grim looking place.

We set off back to Cowes the next morning at about 7:00am, had a "near miss" with another yacht during the night and arrived in time for breakfast at UKSA. I was in bed during the near miss but in the resulting post mortem it was discovered that we were showing completely the wrong navigation lights and the approaching yacht would have thought we were at anchor. Sailing at night is quite a strange sensation, especially if there is cloud cover or no moon. It can be incredibly hard to make out other vessels, determine what they are, work out which direction they are heading in with respect to us and how fast they are approaching or not as the case maybe. With recent incidents as sea you get a bit paranoid and when the sun does finally come up, it's like a blindfold has been taken off.

I'm thinking you may be getting bored reading these updates so I have produced a slideshow below which is a kind of collage of pictures from the first 7 weeks of the course. It's got backing music so if you are in an office turn your sound down, if not, turn it up - it's a magnificent song !!You may have to download some software to view it. If that's too much hassle go here to view: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-SnoBJ7NsU

Also, here's a video that I did on the catamaran. It's a bit shakey, I'm just experimenting with video - will do better next time. Here's the link if the embedded video doesn't work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdqaJbxkQ4U

The fire fighting was good fun, I have done a more extreme version of what we do on this course when I was in the Navy but it still gets the adrenaline going and I was a good deal fitter when I did it last time. The final exercise at the end of the two days is a live fire in a mock up of a house. You go in through a first floor door into a room that is already smoke logged - they light the fire and then leave it for half an hour. We then have to get all the hose and ourselves down a staircase which is a bit more illuminated (from the fire) but much hotter. At the bottom of the staircase the fire is within 6 feet of us through a door which is ajar. We have to pass it with the hose and go into the next room in order to attack the fire through a fully open door. This is where the instructor seems to make idle conversation about the fire whilst we're doing a "boil in the bag" impression. "It's hot isn't it" he says "come a bit closer and feel the heat increase, notice how the flames are licking around the door, and a bit closer", "yep, it's hot, now then, anyone else fancy a saunter back out?" I say. We all have a go at fighting the fire using different methods and take notice of the heat that is generated when water is used on the fire (steam is produced in huge quantities). Then it's back out the same way we came in but it's hotter (all that steam rising) and harder work getting the hose back up. We're only in there for about 20 minutes but everyone is covered in sweat and pretty tired at the end. Some people overcame the strange sensation of using breathing apparatus and only having a limited amount of air, some people overcame the perfectly natural fear of fire and operating in zero visibility, and we all enjoyed it. The professional fire fighters were very good and I think we all have a new understanding of the situations that they get called into for real.

Power boating was a magnificent couple of days, especially the second day when got to do some high speed stuff in the Solent. I had never been on fast "rib" - rigid inflatable boat. Hitting a wave at speed and taking off is full on boys stuff :)

We're making fast progress through the syllabus now, 7 weeks seems like such a short period of time on one hand but on the other I've learned more than I could have imagined beforehand. I'm already a Coastal Skipper, I've passed all the shore based exams required for Yachtmaster Offshore and I've passed something called STCW95 which is a qualification that is required to work commercially in the yachting industry. On Friday we've got 4 exams including an oral and practical with an external examiner which if I pass will qualify me to operate radio equipment on any size of vessel, anywhere in the world for general purpose communications, distress and search & rescue.

In amongst all the training we've also squeezed in one day off which I took as an opportunity to get off the island and go up to London to see Tricia. It wasn't until I got there that I realised I had been completely consumed by the course and getting slightly bogged down by it, so it was good to forget about sailing for 36 hours and get some bar hours in.

We start our third sea phase on Saturday, we've only got to do 2 more passages which will only take about 24 hours. We're probably going to get across to Cherbourg as we've been east and west so south is our only alternative (we could go north but we'd hit green hard stuff, otherwise known as terra firma after about a mile). So once we've done the passages its practice practice practice. Our man over board, mooring and anchoring drills need to be perfect by the end of this sea phase and we've also got to carry on learning pilotage in the Solent as well. The long summer seems to have officially ended so it's all going to get a tad chilly from now on - time to batten down the hatches and crack open the hot chocolate.