Experiences at sea

In which is discussed the fine art of cooking whilst underway in a
storm, the finer points of embalming and sadly neglected skill of
accurate projectile vomiting.

Sometimes The Maritime Volunteer Service offers its member the chance
to go to sea for a few days. Last year I undertook such a trip. We left
Southampton and cruised to St Mary's in the Isles of Scilly to proceed
from there to Lundy in the Bristol Channel thence onto Milford Haven in
the south west corner of Wales.

Ships and Boats of all types and sizes all have one thing in common,
they look a lot bigger out of the water than in it and MVS Appleby is
no exception.
She is over seventy feet in length and about twenty feet across the
beam, which means that you don't want to be painting her bottom with a
two inch brush.

We cast off and sailed south down Southampton water on the Thursday
evening. It grew dark as we passed the western end of the Isle of Wight
and a whole panoply of lights was laid out in front of us. We passed
our home port of Poole at about midnight so I rang up my wife to say
good night. She wasn't pleased to be woken by this romantic gesture. I
took my turn at the wheel and soon saw the loom of the lighthouse at
Portland Bill.

The sea at night it is an entirely different world. The land upon which
we live out our existence is an irrelevant grey smudge, out there is a
world of flashing lights, passing craft, disembodied voices on the
radio and the weather.

Very soon after casting off I realised that my fellow travellers were
rapidly forming themselves into a community upon which we would all
have to rely for the next three days. Those with engineering skills
would appear briefly, don ear protectors and dive down a vertical
ladder to the engine room. This massive beast that supplied us with our
light, heat, hot water and propulsion needed to be tended like a
baby.
In the galley we took turns to produce meals, it didn't matter what was
served, anything tastes good at sea if it is hot and you haven't eaten
for four hours. I even enjoyed Tesco's Value fish cakes, something that
makes my stomach do a back flip, triple Salco and double toe loop on
dry land.

We worked four hour watches. Our first landfall would not be for twenty
six hours so we needed to keep the ship fully operational through the
night until we were able to tie up at the beautiful stone harbour at
St. Marys.

As we chugged through the night I was able to free my mind of all the
day to day worries. The only thing that I need concern myself with was
the compass heading and looking out for other vessels.
Even that task was made easy by the radar set was we could set to sound
an alarm if any targets were encountered within a certain range of the
ship. We set the range ring to half a mile and it remained silent for
the whole night. The GPS told us where we were at all times. I am
always amazed at this wonderful piece of technology that can give you a
reading on your position anywhere in the world. I have even seen it
used by people who have trouble remembering where they parked the
car!
The course had already been pre-programmed into the GPS in the form of
a series of way points. These are key points on the journey where
course changes are required.

GPS is extremely accurate, I heard a tale about a man who was sailing
single handed down the Thames Estuary and had taken the positions of
main navigation buoys from the chart and entered them as way
points.
The proof of the accuracy of the system came when, as the alarm sounded
to indicate that a way point had been reached, there was a huge crash.
He had sailed at full tilt into the buoy, which in the scheme of things
is not a good idea. They are very large and very heavy and generally
come off best in any such incident.

I came off watch and turned into my bunk. Another thing I can't do
ashore is sleep when there is noise, so inevitably I dropped straight
off to sleep even though the main engine, working at best speed was
only just inches away on the other side of the bulkhead.
On board ship you soon become accustomed to the feel of the ship moving
through the water. When that feeling changes you are instantly awake.
One such incident occurred during my four hour sleep. We must have
suddenly changed course because the roll of the ship changed and the
noise of the water slapping the side of the hull came from the other
side.
After a few minutes it returned to normal and I drifted off again. At
eight AM I was back at the wheel.
We passed along the south Devon coast, breakfast was served. How I was
supposed to steer with a mug of tea in one hand and a bacon sandwich in
the other was a mystery. I looked for somewhere to put my plate.
Here's a tip for any would be mariner: whatever you do don't upset the
navigator by getting tea and crumbs on the chart.

We sat down to lunch when I came off watch and I spent the next few
hours chatting with the rest of the crew. Some were from our local MVS
unit, other from units along the south coast from Weymouth to
Bexhill.

After a day at sea and after seeing the most westerly point of England
disappear behind us we started to see small lumps on the horizon, which
was lucky as if we had missed the Scillies that next land is the USA
and I don't think we had enough fishcakes on board to get there.

We got to St. Marys as it got dark. By the time we had secured the ship
and dinner had been served it past nine in the evening so there was no
recourse open to us but to go on a pub crawl. On St. Marys this doesn't
take long as there are but three pubs to visit. The first, at the end
of the harbour wall and marking the beginning of the main street
through St. Marys is the Mermaid. Harold Wilson retired to the islands
after his long career in politics and the Mermaid was said to be his
favourite haunt. As I sat there supping as pint I could see why. The
building was moving as thought it was at sea. I had noticed this
strange effect as I stepped off the ship onto the massive stone steps
that form part of the harbour wall. The movement of the ship had become
normal, it was dry land that needed some getting used to.
Moving along to the next pub we sat down with another pint. This pub
was far better behaved and hardly wobbled at all.
By the time we got to the last one everything was calm. Closing time
soon came around and we returned to the ship. There isn't any nightlife
after the Pub shuts so soon the place was quiet.

We turned in and slept solidly until WHAT?!?! Four A.M.? Are you mad?
We needed to take advantage of the tide if we were to reach Lundy in
any sensible amount of time. We were soon at sea again chugging north
east by east along the north Cornish coast. The weather was not so nice
today and the Bristol channel was starting to display some of her more
uncomfortable tendencies. The bottom of Wales and the top of the West
country make a kind of funnel which can bottle weather up and
exaggerate its effects. Up on the river Severn this can be seen as the
delightful Severn Bore but out at sea it was just rough. The ship
started to pitch around in a most uncomfortable manner and people
started to find excuses to go and stare over the rail.
In the galley they were preparing yet another meal. It is interesting
to note that even in this weather somebody saw fit to put soup on the
menu and if it was on the menu then it got cooked.
Missing something out of the menu could only lead to an accounting
imbalance and that would never do. The rolling of the ship got worse
and pans began to slide around and fall on the floor. Soon the soup was
not just on the menu but on the floor, up the walls and running like a
colourful stream along the scuppers. Lunch, it seemed, would be a
little late.

Conditions were such that nobody went outside unless there was good
reason. We sat and chatted, absence of TV does this.

The conversation covered the various careers and livelihoods of the
crew. One of the guys earns his living as an undertaker in Brighton. He
told tales of bodies that wouldn't fit round corners because of rigor
mortis.
When grieving relatives aren't there to be shocked bodies are made to
fit around corners in some alarming ways. We heard descriptions of
suicides being cut down from their chosen places of self execution and
being allowed to fall down flights of stairs, bodies from nasty car
accidents that could not be identified and dead tramps that were found
crawling with lice asnd flees.
It wasn't the gory descriptions of people's final hours, the rolling of
the ship or the smell of the food being murdered in the galley, nor was
it the smell of the heads wafting up the companionway. It was a
combination of all of them, coupled with a particularly graphic
description of the process of embalming that finally got me racing out
of the watertight door and donating my breakfast to the fishes.

All I can say in my defence is that I was the last of the crew to
succumb.

Once liberated from a turgid breakfast things began to look brighter.
It was by now my turn at the wheel again. When I got to the bridge
there was a huddle over the chart table and lots of lines were being
drawn. The upshot was that the weather was not suitable for a trip to
Lundy, which was a shame. It is a place I have always wanted to visit.
We turned north and headed directly for our final destination, Milford
Haven.
As we travelled north, roughly along a line from Padstow to Milford
Haven we passed into less troubled waters. Soon the rain eased and we
enjoyed a bright but blustery afternoon. From the wheelhouse I enjoyed
my first glimpse of gannets fishing and a raft of puffins eating sand
eels with a clutch of young, miles from land.
The gannets were spectacular, diving like stukas towards the sea and
folding their wings and rolling onto their backs as they entered the
water. The water was so clear that I could see the birds flying along
beneath the surface spearing the fish before breaking the surface and
flying off with their catch. The puffins seemed to be too small to be
out alone so far from land.

It was a long afternoon, when there was no sign of land it seemed that
the ship was hardly moving. Eventually we started to make out some
details on the horizon. There is a huge refinery at Milford and its
chimney is the tallest thing for miles. We started to make out a tiny
stick on the horizon. We checked the chart which shows all prominent
land features.

It was bang on the nose, so we congratulated ourselves on our fine use
of the GPS and steered for the mark.

Even though we could see the coast it took the rest of the day to reach
the haven. We were a day early and our berth in the docks was not ready
for us. We settled for a quiet anchorage at the western end of the
haven in Dale Bay. We ate then slept, we divided the night into equal
sections and each stood an anchor watch, this again is made easy by
using the radar. All we needed to know was that the ship wasn't moving
so again we set a range ring that cut through three targets on the
screen. Any movement would become apparent at a glance.

The next day we took out time over breakfast, cleaned the ship and
weighed anchor for the short run up the haven to Milford docks. We were
escorted for the last half mile by a member of the Milford Haven MVS as
we passed through the entrance lock and glided into the basin to tie
up.

After two full days afloat in a small community it seemed almost
overwhelming to step ashore to so much space and so many people. I can
only wonder at the sensations experienced by such people as Ellen
McArthur who spend months out of sight of land completely alone.

We handed the ship over to the local crew and set about unloading our
kit. It seemed very odd to be driven back to Dorset in a car, after a
leisurely journey of 8 knots taking two full days, the M4 seemed very
fast indeed.