Training - Part 2

The first thing I did when I got up on Day 2 was put on pretty much every piece of clothing I had in my bag - actually, that's a lie, the first thing I did was give Sparkey a tirade of abuse about his snoring, then I got dressed. So I was now wearing (from top down) a thermal hat, 2 short sleeve t-shirts (1 technical material, 1 merino wool), 2 long sleeve t-shirts (one technical, one merino wool), 2 fleeces, 1 wind-proof jacket, 1 waterproof heavy-duty outer layer, a scarf and gloves, 2 pairs of thermal leggings, 2 pairs of trekking trousers, one pair of waterproof heavy duty leggings, 2 pairs of thermal socks and a pair of technical sailing boots. Day 2 started with a walk around the deck of the boat and our first lesson in rigging the boat - basically setting up all the sails and ropes on deck so that you are ready to sail. This took about 3 hours of standing around in the cold and despite now wearing everything I had brought I was freezing again. So I was now tired, cold and getting all the rigging wrong. And at the very point that I may have been most tempted to jack in the whole adventure, everything suddenly changed - the gallows humour began. It soon became clear that no one had slept well last night (well, except Sparkey and Keith, aka the snorers), everyone was cold and no one, not even the experienced sailors, were used to rigging a boat this size. And suddenly, by laughing at ourselves and the situation we found ourselves in, the crew began to bond. We were in this together and nothing, not even the appalling weather we were facing was going to break us.

We set off for our first night sail which was just amazing. It's remarkable how strong your night vision is when you get away from the city lights. We sailed till about 9pm and although cold, we all enjoyed it immensely. Upon returning to port we had time for a hot shower and even a quick beer and spirits were remarkably high. The forecast was for freezing winds and snow the next day, and the boat was still raining inside but we didn't care. We went to bed, most of us still wearing all our clothes and had a better if still not great sleep. As the week went on the gallows humour became more and more outrageous as the weather got worse and worse - we had force 8 gales, snow, freezing fog, temperatures as low as about -8C with an additional wind chill factor of about -11C. But we just sailed on and on, learning, enjoying it and coping with the conditions. Day 5 saw us sail overnight from about 11am on the thursday (having been out until 2am the night before drinking in Weymouth) until 5am friday morning. It was our first experience of sailing in watches - ie 2 teams of 4 taking it in turns to sail the boat while the others tried to sleep below. The shifts would normally be 4 hours on 4 hours off but due to the extreme cold it was reduced to 2 on/2 off. That left little time for sleeping really and so we just lay in our bunk with our full wet-weather gear on (to save 10 minutes trying to take it off and then put it back on) trying to get some rest. You'd learn tricks like not rolling over as that would expose a new cold bit which you'd have to try to heat up all over again, and in between it all we actually grabbed bits and pieces of sleep here and there. One of the more surreal moments was when I was called in by the skipper to contact 2 french fishing vessels on the VHF radio who didn't speak english to find out where they were going. He then asked what we were and when I told him we were a sailing boat (it was about 2am in freezing conditions at this time) he simply paused and said "oh" as in "are you nuts?". The other training boat had actually abandoned their overnight sail at around midnight but our Skipper was adamant we were carrying on (we think largely as punishment for a slightly sluggish and error-strewn performance that morning) and in the end we made it. It was slightly surreal going for a shower in a snow-covered East Cowes Marina at 5am but very satisfying none-the-less.

And so after a gentle sail back to Portsmouth on Friday morning in thick fog we arrived back in one piece. What followed was a 4 hour "deep clean" of the boat for the oncoming crew and then one hell of a session over dinner looking back on what had been a remarkable 5 days sailing. In one of the few profound conversations of the week we had discussed how, signing up to an experience such of this should be taking a step up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to Self-Actualisation -  (anyone remember them from Uni?) when in fact the reality is that you are actually pushing yourself right back down to the bottom - Survival. After chatting to the Skipper and the training directors, we learnt that the last week had been probably the toughest Level 1 training ever experienced and that, the whole purpose of Level 1 was simply to push crew to the absolute limit to see how they will cope in the conditions. 20% of people drop out after Level 1 training and interestingly, on what was the toughest Level 1 ever, only 1 of the 15 people dropped out. There were so many highlights of the week it's hard to remember them all nevermind try to recount them all. There were comedy moments such as duing a lecture on what kit to buy/bring, I asked if there were sailing trousers with knee pads (as your knees get destroyed up on the foredeck when trying to put up sails/take down sails in rough seas) - a fair enough question I thought - the Skipper thought about it for a bit then said "No, not really. I mean you could perhaps try to find some knee pads in a DIY store or something, or you could just MAN THE F**K UP NIALL" which simply brought the house down. From then on if anyone complained about anything, whether justified or not, they were greeted with a chorus of "JUST MAN THE F**K UP". Sparkey and I were soon branded Idiots 1 and 2, which stuck with us all the way through Level 2 and I fear probably will do all the way to the end of the race - somehow it seems to fit. But possibly the highlight of all was when we had 30 minutes in Weymouth to go to outdoor shops/chemists etc to get any gear we might need, that Anton, our Russian Spy, went off and bought everyone onboard a set of thick gloves used for helming the boat as a gift - a remarkably thoughtful thing to do in the circumstances.

Then the week finished with a particularly unwelcome 7.30am start (after a 1.30am finish from the drinking the night before) for 6 hours of Sea Survival and Rescue including 2 hours in a pool with liferafts, life jackets etc. It was very interesting stuff and would undoubtedly save your life (for instance if you catch a fish when stranded you should only eat the eyes, liver and skin as the flesh requires so much liquid to process that you would effectively speed up your own death by eating it) but was probably not what we needed after the previous night's excess. And then it was over. We had survived Level 1. We said our goodbyes, and then Sparkey and I along with John (the Yacht Ninja as he later became known for his ability to appear unseen at one end of the boat and then suddenly at the other) got our gear together and went to find our boat for our Level 2 training. We feared it couldn't be the same atmosphere as we had just experienced on our boat in week 1 and we were right - in fact it simply couldn't have been more different......