Padre
by David Middlemass Storm Force 10 in the Baltic
One of the most exciting things that I have done since moving out to Germany with the Battalion was when we took some of 7th Armoured Brigade sailing from Kiel to Denmark and back on Ex Rats Breeze. This was eight days of adventure training in the Baltic Sea and involved ten yachts in total. Along the way, we also had to teach the crews how to sail, ready for a Competent Crew test at the end of the week.
boat would heel right over and plunge down into the sea and we took quite a hammering. I could see the crew out of the corner of my eye looking at me. They were thinking “Is this OK?” “Is this meant to happen?” “Am I going to die?”. It was seriously scary weather. Part of the skipper’s job is to be completely calm, make the right decisions and set the tone. I just kept laughing and told them that this was going to be fantastic! We were cheering the wind gauge as it crept up. In the end, the wind topped 50 knots - Storm Force 10!!
My First Mate was Cpl Coates. He said “Whatever you want, just tell me and it will happen” - and it did. This was really interesting for me because, as a Padre, I’m not normally part of the chain of command and not in a position to give orders. However, on a boat, I’m the Captain in the real sense of the word. I made the decisions as I know how to navigate and how to run the yacht. All I had to do was tell Cpl Coates what I wanted and he sorted the crew out for me. He got the boat running like clockwork.
The first two days were pretty routine easy sailing, pottering up to Denmark. The third morning was different: the wind and rain picked up and not in a good way. It was hard to stand up on the quayside but, as we’re in the Army, we set sail anyway, reefed right down and beat into the teeth of a gale. The
I tried to do my duty as a Padre and to reassure the crew by telling them that I’d seen weather like this before. I explained that my own boat had been completely destroyed in a hurricane in January 2004 off the west coast of Scotland but they simply refused to be comforted by my experiences. Maj Mckay’s boat had even more of a hammering as it was even smaller than mine. At one point, the nose dug into a wave while two guys were working on the foredeck. Their automatic lifejackets inflated and they had to crawl back up a 45 degree deck with nice yellow and red inflated wings. As one soldier said “I was sh***ing myself”. Another said “I thought sailing was a sport for poofs, but it’s hard-core”. Another that it was “much more scary than sky diving”.
The rest of the trip was comparatively easy. One of the things that the crew have to do to pass their test is to be able to row round the boat in the little dinghy. I was really surprised how hard some people found this. One chap got in, was blown downwind and, whatever he tried to do, just couldn’t get his dinghy going in the right direction. The crew tried to help him as best they could by shouting out cheery encouragement: “You total mong!” “You spacka!” “You lunatic!” “You f*****g spastatic!” but, even with the aid of this helpful advice and witty banter, it took him half an hour to get back to the boat. The crew did have quite a way with words and could certainly swear like troopers. One of
them could construct entire sentences using variations on just one word that begins with F. I’m not sure if it was natural talent or if he got it from a taught module in the on-line Learning Portal called “Trooper Speak”.
I explained to the crew that a yacht has to be packed like webbing in the sense that everything has to be in the right place and everything fastened down when we sail. This is so that any member of the crew can put his hands on a flare, the fog horn or whatever when it is needed. What made this point sink in was when we heard a loud, sudden explosion from down below in the cabin. What had happened was that a crew member put the kettle on the gas stove but then left the cigarette lighter beside it on the galley work top, instead of putting it back into the drawer. The boat had then healed over, the lighter fell on to the gas ring, melted, exploded and then jumped into the sink. It was a good shot but we were lucky not to have done more damage.
The energy that soldiers have is astonishing; they worked hard on the boat and played hard too at night. Sometimes, they would take a turn about the town later of an evening, hoping to meet charming ladies and do a little courting. Actually, that’s probably not their choice of words.... They offered to bring one of these charming ladies back to the boat for me. I thanked them for the kind offer but told them that I was married and not interested in any other woman in the world. It was a relief to get everyone back to Kiel alive and they all passed the Competent Crew test. What follows though is the worst bit of the entire trip - the handover. It’s like marching out of a Quarter only they take it much, much, more seriously with boats. It meant a whole lot of scrubbing and packing. The worst bit was that the toilet (“heads” in a boat) was blocked. Stupidly, I volunteered to fix it. I started dismantling at the bowl: no blockage. Took one long stinking flexible pipe off the wall: still no blockage. Took the next one off and found the problem. I tried to clear it by blasting the hose down the pipe. It didn’t clear: it just blew back all over me. By this stage, I had taken something of a dislike to this recalcitrant pipe and admonished it using distinctly un-padre-like words. I had to take it out of the boat, onto the jetty and poke it with a brush handle and hose to clear it then reassemble the thing. It was truly a sh*t job and I was very glad to get a shower.
So, a truly excellent trip all round. It was a tremendous way to get to know the guys. You talk about all sorts when you’re sailing. It was great to have them on my territory for a change and to be able to teach them something of what I know. It helped me hugely to feel accepted into the Battalion. We’d been through seriously scary weather, got back safely and had a great deal of fun all round. I’m looking forward to my next trip.
The Mercian Eagle October 2010 73
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