I have obtained my first sea-going certificate of competence, and I notice on a detachable part of the certificate that the Royal Yacht Association (RYA) ‘know how hard… [I have]… worked to obtain it’. They may know in general terms, but they cannot know the blood, sweat, toil, and tears I have given, mostly willingly, nor can they know in detail what any other individual has seen and suffered.

In my case, there has been very little blood, just a few minor scrapes and nicks. However, there has been a superfluity of sweat, associated with the extremely hard toil of hauling and handling ropes and unfamiliar tackle. The tropical heat has been like the heavy weight of Pilgrim’s Burden, constantly gnawing and worrying on my back. Tears I just held back when I was recounting the experiences of my uncle Peter, who spent two days in a life-raft in winter beyond the arctic circle, with two companions, one dead.

I had shared this publicly to underline the importance of good seamanlike practice associated with emergency procedures in life and death situations including the abandonment of a sinking vessel and use of the self-inflating life-raft which should be lashed securely to the foredeck but capable of very quick release and deployment in the event of needing to use it.

I said above that this was my first sea-going certificate, but that was not in fact true. Quite early on in my Merchant Naval career, I obtained a certificate of competence in the French language. This entitled me to attach a small tricolour badge to the upper sleeve of my cold weather uniform reefer jacket, and to receive a small supplement of pay.

I had taken the necessary examination, run by the Berlitz School of Languages, during a spell of leave, when I attended the P & O Head Offices then in Leadenhall, in the City of London. This location in the vast urban canyon of the city from which a quarter of the land surface of the planet once was ruled, must have been very close to the site of East India House itself. This was the Honourable East Company (HEIC). It was from there that our Indian trade was directed. The inevitable interactions with native powers created the conditions under which the British Indian Empire was first acquired and then governed. This continued, with P & O eventually replacing the Company’s licensing of its own ships, until the time of the Mutiny in the middle of the 19th century, when the Company’s remaining powers were subsumed into an arm of the British government.

I passed the test, but was only called to use the French qualification in anger twice. The first time the ship was anchored off Ajaccio in Corsica and being served by local launches to take the passengers on trips ashore. The Radio Officer in the shore party was a bit of a wag and he sent back a message by radio to the ship to get me to instruct the launch captains to ‘pass around the stern of the vessel and come alongside the after companion ladder communicating with the Promenade deck’. To his great satisfaction I completely failed to make the Corsican Captain understand a word of what I was trying to convey.

The second and last occasion was, strangely enough, also in Corsican waters, this time in the Bonifacio Straits which separate that island from Italian Sardinia. There had been an earthquake in Southern Turkey and very strange meteorological conditions resulted in a force 10 hurricane strength wind associated with very high seas, but with unexpectedly good visibility. The distance between the wave crests was not so great as it would have been in open waters, but even so, the 38,000 ton liner was pitching and yawing like a rowing boat steaming up the crests and falling down into the troughs. It was 0600 and all the non-watch keepers and passengers were still asleep when I was awoken by a general tannoy announcement requiring me to report to the bridge. I flung on some uniform and ran, taking care to avoid being seen by any passenger since any action that suggested emergency was absolutely forbidden.

When I arrived on the bridge the Captain and Officers of the Watch were standing around a radio telephone which continuously squawked:

‘Le Northern Star, ou etes vous? Repondez s’il vous plait’ …. then a slight pause before the same message was repeated ”Le Northern Star, ou etes vous? Repondez s’il vous plait’ – on and on.

They must have been waiting for some time in a tight circle like that while this communication was being repeatedly transmitted. Then the Captain had decided to hoik me out of bed and my summons was broadcast to every cabin and public space on the ship. This time I was able to translate all the messages that the Captain said to me in English into a good enough French to be understood by the Francophone shore-based radio operator. I had to ask what was the height of the waves at the entrance to Ajaccio Harbour and to convey the response.

As a result of the information which I translated the Captain decided to cancel the ship’s visit to Ajaccio and to continue directly to Gibraltar, our next port of call.

No such emergencies dogged our circum-navigation of the Island of Lankawi, some 124 nautical miles, which took 6 days, and involved 7 hours of night sailing. We made 3 landfalls, and conducted many evolutions on the way, including about half a dozen ‘Man Overboard’ drills involving ‘Bob’ a big fat fender, whose body was represented by a coiled warp and whose face was drawn in indelible marker on the side of the buoy. It was pretty easy to bring Bob back on board after he had been caught with a boat hook, but of course a real human casualty, perhaps unconscious, would be much harder to recover, since Kay Sira’s rails are about six feet above the normal level of the water.

Each evolution involved back-breaking work hauling in the huge genoa sail furling it onto the forestay, only to haul it out again ready for the next merciless cycle of that training. At one point our Instructor announced that we would not turn home to dinner until we could recover the ‘casualty’ in under 5 minutes. In the end we achieved a time of 2 minutes 53 seconds and I am sure that we all felt 10 feet tall.

I found the work particularly hard on the feet, which still are tingling whilst I sit typing. My ankles swelled up and I reported this. The instructor, Barry, and his wife Lynette looked at my ankles and recognised the condition as one they had seen before. They recommended a visit to a pharmacy, as in this country they are licensed to do simple diagnoses. I obtained some anti-diuretic tablets and after my third daily dose the condition is improving.

Next week we spend in the classroom exercising only the opposite part of the body – that is the head, as we learn about passage planning, chart work, basic navigation, compass work, tidal flow and extents, weather patterns, forecasting, and more.

To summarise what was learned this week I would say that there was a strong familiarisation process with the boat. It had to become like an extension of each crew member’s body. Only when this analogue has at least a foundation in each crew member can the vessel be operated smartly. In apposition to that intimate physical and psychological learning process was development of a human angle, in which each crew member learned to rely on the concerted actions of each other, sometimes well executed, sometimes clumsily, but always as an essential complement to one’s own actions.

To start with I was a little over-anxious and took on too much. but I soon found that I had to learn some moderation as in the enormous heat the continuous toil quickly took me towards my current limit of endurance. I hope to become stronger as time passes and I practice more, but it is a salutary lesson that I must rely on the hard work and contribution of others to preserve my own strength so that I can reach the end of an exhausting day without needing to lie down.

It was sad to part with two of my first shipmates, Jenny and Joerge, after developing such a close working relationship, but we humans must learn to be more like the ever-changing tides and currents that can carry us to distant shores.

Here is the sun setting on our 5th day at sea.