Week six: Lessons in sea survival

4:26pm Thursday 8th May 2008

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This week we've been all at sea as the main focus of training has been seamanship.

There's been a lot of theory, learning about knots and ropes and how to berth and unberth a ship.

Overall it's been really good, but there's been a lot to take in. Fortunately we both passed our exam.

We started the week down at Jupiter Point, the Sea Sense training centre, about 10 minutes drive from HMS Raleigh, located on the River Lynher.

This is where Raleigh keeps all the boats, ranging from yachts right up to the Pacific 24 rigid inflatable boat, which are the latest boats the Navy uses for a variety of jobs at sea.

Each Royal Navy warship has at least one of the boats and coxswains from across the Fleet come to Jupiter Point to learn how to drive them.

We spent some of the time there training on a decommissioned minesweeper, Brecon, which is moored in the centre of the river.

Being on board Brecon was really good for us as this is the type of ship we are likely to be serving on at sea.

One of the highlights of training on board was the 'swimmer of the watch exercise'.

For the Port class, Adam volunteered to be the swimmer.

To simulate a man over board a dummy is thrown into the river and the swimmer has to dive in to save him.

Dressed in a dry suit and fins, Adam jumped off the side of the ship into the water to recover the dummy.

It was a real adrenaline rush standing on the side of the ship, preparing to jump, and Adam reckons it's the best thing he has done so far.

We've also learnt how to carry out a replenishment at sea or RAS as it is known.

This is when a ship and a Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel sail close together at sea to transfer stores, fuel and even people, using a wire across the divide.

Raleigh has a purpose built mock-up of two ships for exercise purposes.

It was really cold and rainy when we were carrying out the exercise, which made it all the more realistic.

There was lots of teamwork involved in making sure the ropes and wires were secured safely.

There's also been a lesson in sea survival, when dressed in protective equipment we had to jump off the high board into the pool and make our way to a life-raft.

Before seamanship week began, we had our weekend on Dartmoor to contend with.

Dartmoor was hard work but really good fun. The weather conditions were amazing - one minute is was sunny, that it rained and then it was foggy.

We arrived on the Saturday and put up our tents, then had some lessons in camp skills including how to heat up our food from our ration packs.

The next day we had a 17 kilometre walk across the moor. Looking for a short cut Adam's team took a wrong turning.

They all had to pull together to keep spirits up and get back on track.

The promise of a meal and a pint at the pub in Princetown gave us all the incentive to ignore the blisters on our feet and keep walking.

It was certainly worth it as we dined out in style - Adam had a mixed grill, while Nick tucked into steak and chips.

Arriving back at Raleigh on Sunday evening we met the new recruits in our division.

They all seemed really shy and quiet and it's hard to believe that we were just like them not so long ago.

As well as our seamanship training we've also had kit musters every night this week building up to our Divisional Training Officer's kit inspection next week.

We feel we are getting better and it's the attention to detail we really need to look out for.

Given what happened with our Chief Petty Officer's inspection we are nervous about this one.

However before that happens we will be back down to Jupiter Point for a night on the water, sleeping on a yacht or maybe the minesweeper, Brecon.

Adam's class - Port - are there on Friday night and Nick's class - Starboard - are there on Saturday.

With only three weeks left of our course, we've started to think about our passing-out-parade. All in all training is getting tougher, but we are still enjoying it and the weeks are just flying by.