The sea is calling

Tenacious 6th to 4th Aug 2016

Matt has a love for the old tall ships and the ocean, luckily, I have a love of the ocean. While on a work trip to Sydney we came across this beautiful tall ship in Darling Harbour. Her name is Tenacious, a 3-mast tall ship from the UK. Tenacious is specifically designed to accommodate people with disabilities and is a training ship. She is wheelchair friendly, grab rails and braille where required. It had taken 10 years of planning to get her to Australia and would only be here for a couple of months before making her way back home.

Tenacious anchored at Wilsons Promontory

Matt spoke to the guy who was on the wharf handing out information, basically wanting to know the ins and outs of a duck’s bum. Then as we walked away, Matt turning constantly to admire her, I heard the catch cry I was going to become very familiar with, “Right…. we’re doing it!” and without blinking an eye he booked a cabin. This trip would be the very first of our tall ship sailing adventures together.

It was a short trip down the east coast of Australia from Sydney, across the Bass Strait to Hobart, and back to Melbourne. This was 7 days of sailing where you had to work the boat, from standing watch in the middle of the night, and what I thought from my zero experience of sailing, in the freezing cold, to hauling sails and prepping and serving meals. Little did I know, at that time, I was yet to experience real cold when sailing, but thats another story I am going to write.

We jumped on board on the afternoon of the 6^th August where we were allocated our cabins or bunks, had a safety briefing, issued with our wet weather gear, put into our watch groups with watch leaders, our leader was the wonderful Robyn, who was in his 70’s and a real character, and a general “get to know each other”. In our group we had 2 people with disabilities – 1 wheelie, Alex, and Helen, who had MS.

Styling it up
Otis and Alex
Our fearless watch leader Robyn

The next morning there was a lesson on how to climb the rat lines to the crow’s nest and how to unfurl the sails. Scampering out along a rope while clinging to the yard arms was pretty easy, and even to cast loose the gaskets holding the sails. But we were still tied to the wharf and not rolling around on the ocean, which I’m thinking will be a whole different kettle of fish, and was soon to find out just how true that was.

We set sail that afternoon, and as we made it out pass the Sydney Heads, we were fortunate enough to have a couple of whales breaching. There was a bit of swell, but we were heading into the wind so we had to keep the engine running.

Those first few days were a bit of a head spin, trying to learn the terminology that the permanent crew were using, to trying to remember which lines to “ease” and which ones to “haul”. And you soon discovered muscles that haven’t been used for a while.

Most of the time the weather was pretty fair, but still the wind wasn’t playing nice and the engine was a constant drone in your ear. That was until we were on watch one evening and we were going to anchore at Wilsons Promontory, so we could spend a relaxing day at the National Park. We could see a rain squall in the distance and thinking “Oh crap we’re going to cop that”. At that point in time we had a couple of sails set and when the squall hit all hell broke loose. The two permanent crew where barking orders to get the sails down. Myself and another older lady were to ease while the guys hauled. We were easing but apparently nothing was happening, with the wind and rain hitting you in the face, your hood flopping down over your eyes, you couldn’t tell what was happening. The permanent crew continually shouting to ease and us shouting back “we are” but our shouts where drowned out by the sails being whipped around by the wind. Eventually the sails were hauled in and things settled down to just manning the boat ready to anchore for the night. And on this night, after the chaos caused by the squall, we decided to have a drink. A game of charades was played, which was hilarious, made even more so by the host, who was drinking champagne from the bottle with a man-made extended straw, who was not only getting rather inebriated, but also had a hearing disability.

The next morning, with a few sore heads, we made our way via tender, to the beach to just kick back for a few hours and explore Wilsons Promontory. Then it was back on board to make the trip across Bass Strait to Hobart, then back across to Melbourne.

That night the crew were called to a meeting to be advised that there had been a change of sailing plans, the powers to be decided to cut the trip short by two days so that we could arrive into Melbourne on the Sunday instead of the Tuesday. This, as it was relayed to us, was to allow for as much media coverage, and a flotilla of boats to accompany Tenacious in to the Port of Melbourne. There were a lot of unhappy “paying” crew, as we believed this was the plan all along and we had been duped out of 2 days of sailing. We could totally understand that they needed the media coverage, and it was awesome having all the boats waving and cheering beside us, plus the news helicopters buzzing above us, plus there was also a huge crowd of spectators on the wharf as we docked, but we all should have been informed at the start.

Once all the fan fare died down a few of us did what any seafaring pirate would do, we hit the closest bar, with the plan of doing a pub crawl on our way to dinner. Well, as all well laid plans can turn to sh*t, ours did just that, but not in a bad way. Our first stop was the Pirates bar, of course, which was on the pier where we docked. There was a guy singing and playing the guitar and the atmosphere was great, so a round of drinks where bought…… and then another…. and another… and another…until we lost count. Things where getting a little messy and this was reflected in the fact that I thought the guy singing needed a helping hand and joined him in a song or two, I’m not sure if the other patrons at the bar appreciated my talents, but Matt I believe this is the night Matt came to the conclusion that my singing is crap.

John found his soul mate
Scrubbing the deck before docking

It was time to leave and head up the road for dinner, I can’t remember the name of the bar, but the food was awesome and the band they had playing where fantastic. With a dance floor not big enough to swing a cat, we took it over. I don’t recall the walk back to the boat, or trying to clamber up onto the top bunk, but I checked the phone the next morning and it wasn’t pretty, but all prior to that was such a great night.

With two more days on the boat, but only docked, Matt and I, and I believe a couple of others, went AWOL and we booked two nights in a hotel in Melbourne CBD.

What I learned from this trip is that when sailing you have a lot of “down” time. Which for me was quite hard to deal with, my friends use to say I’m like a cat on a hot tin roof, always moving and looking for something to do, and on a relatively small boat “things to do” are limited. But there are two things in nature that I could sit and stare at for hours, one of those things is fire and the other of course is the ocean. I also got back to the joy of reading and the extension of that…… writing.