Away, haul away, we'll haul away,
We'll heave and hang together
Away, haul away, we'll haul away.
Phew, HMSTC Discoverer was just fine when we arrived after an hour’s drive over storm-battered and land-slide affected St Lucia late December 2013. What devastation, and what hard work to make the roads passable, rebuild houses and bridges, and bring normality back to life. And it was hot, hot, hot!
After some initial training, vittling and seeing in the New Year, we were off on our Caribbean Adventure Training: a mixed crew of members of the armed forces, joint services and sea cadet corps, professional sailors and landlubbers – ship ahoy!
What an amazing experience: a deck under our feet, a happy crew, crystal blue seas, scorching sunshine with the odd shower thrown in, beautiful islands, amazing sunsets, fine winds – though how we managed to have them on the nose sailing at close-haul nearly wherever we went, I do not know... Near enough 600 nautical miles saw us visiting or anchoring off Martinique, Dominica, Les Saintes, Guadeloupe, Antigua, Montserrat, Bequia and St Vincent, riding on the wake of Lord Horatio Nelson as well as Captain Jack Sparrow, before returning to St Lucia.
Though some of us had sailed on similar vessels before, for many of us it was an opportunity to apply previous sailing experience on dinghies or tall ships to our 67 Challenger, learning plenty new things about sailing, about working as a team and, inevitably, about ourselves. And besides plenty of plain sailing, some sun bathing, swimming off the vessel in sheltered bays, runs ashore and fun company there were plenty of challenges, too: learning to trim the sails ‘just so’, reefing the mainsail during middle watch with the seas soaking us to the skin, sweating in the galley cooking and baking under-weigh with the vessel at a constant 35 degree heel, or just going to the heads in a wild swell. If you can’t take a joke...
What better way to soak up a kaleidoscope of impressions than sailing where the wind would blow us, dipping in and out of life ashore. What stuck with me in particular were the hours and hours of sailing, tacking and sail trimming, the care that goes into passage planning , training and maintenance, the many lovely bays wherever you turned around Les Saints, the pelicans swooping over ‘Disco’ as we were anchoring to go snorkelling; then winding our way up to Guadeloupe, where kind Marie-Claude made exchanging money on a Saturday afternoon easy by whisking us into town and back; Octavius’ obvious knowledge, love and pride of ‘his’ island, Dominica, where he toured us around giving us sugar cane, freshly picked grapefruits and cinnamon shavings to taste and took us swimming in caves and conquering waterfalls; that bumpy night passage to Antigua, where we proudly moored in Nelson’s dockyard, running ashore to explore history, to enjoy a steel band and BBQ ,and to explore the capital St John; the 36 hour passage, four hours on/four hours off to the Grenadines, going alongside ‘The Devil’s Table’ on Bequia with its amazing beaches; but also, on reflection, the terrible poverty and the lack of education and opportunities side by side the obscenely richly appointed super yachts in Falmouth Harbour, or Marigot Bay and the shopping centres targeting tourists to part them of their dollars; and above all and nevertheless the challenges a resilience and joy de vivre in the people we met, which is humbling and uplifting in one.
Personally, I have seen this trip as a once in a lifetime opportunity to sail a craft like ‘Disco’ and to sail in the Caribbean, and am immensely grateful for the chance to be part of the crew, and for the grant of the Ulysses Trust towards my travel costs.
