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4a.m. Friday 5th June saw us both heading down to KTY Yachts in Southampton to complete our compulsory navigation, sea survival, first aid at sea and marine VHF courses. These courses are essential for us for two reasons, firstly and most obviously we need to be able to navigate and survive in the ocean should the worst happen. Secondly we need to be able to evidence to the Spanish Authorities in the Canary Islands that we have sufficient skills so that they will allow us to leave port. It also gave us a chance to meet three of the crews we will be racing against.
The courses ran continuously over 8 days from Friday to Friday and involved some very long days in the class room (8-9hrs each day!)
The week started with a full day of learning how to operate a marine VHF radio. In order to allow us to use a VHF radio on the boat each of us had to qualify for an OFCOM radio licence. Alarmingly much of the day was spent learning how to put in MayDay and distress calls hopefully two things that we will not use! As well as learning how to use the emergency features we learnt how to contact any passing ships, this particularly important to ensure that they know of our presence. Travelling at 20 knots a large tanker or container ship can beon top us in 15-20 minutes from first spotting it on the horizon. Many previous ocean rowers have reported large ships passing close by without apparently realising their presence. Our boat is at maximum 1.5 - 2 metres above the water and with a 2-3 metre swell we are almost invisible from the bridge of a large ship!
Day 2 was spent learning how to survive should our boat sink or we cannot right it should it capsize. We learnt about the features of the type of liferaft we will have (when we find the £1,500 to buy it that is!) and how to organise a grab bag with essential emergency kit for abandoninig ship. We then spent two hours in the pool learning how to operate life jackets, inflate liferafts and turn them back over when they inflate upside down. This was allo great fun in a warm swimming pool but all the time we were aware of the harsh reality that there was a small chance we have to do this for real in the cold stormy waters of the mid-Atlantic and possibly in the dark.
We were also shown films of the rescues of yachtsman during the infamous Sydney - Hobart race and the disastorous Fastnet Race (for those of you who are old enough it's the one when Simon LeBon's yacht Drum amongst others capsized). The footage,much of it recorded by news helicopters at the time brought home the real reasons for doing the drills and put into context just what we moight be letting ourselves in for.
Day 3 was spent with more sea survival and first aid.
The remaining five days were spent learning how to navigate using sights taken from a sextant. We need to prove to the authorities that we are able to navigate safely without elctronic aids such as GPS before they will let us leave port. Those of you who enjoyed maths at school would have been in second heaven! To work out each improved position takes between 20 and 30 different calculations looking many strange and various times and sun positions in page after page after page of numerical tables. We spent 5 -6 hours each day doing this with an hour or two of homework as well. Thanks to Yvonnes our patient and sometimes scary (only joking) tutor all 9 of us managed to pass our RYA Yachtmaster Ocean Navigation quialification.
Friday afternoon was spent at a company called Ocean Safety in Southampton looking at the various pieces of safety equipment that we still need.
A 3 hour drive back to Oundle and Mick was off to the Oundle Rugby Club Dinner Dance where Mick gave a short presentation on the row and passed the bucket round. Many thanks to all those who gave generously and to Andy Gordon for taking and selling portrait photos in order to raise even more money. We finished the night with over £300.
