ONBOARD SPIRIT OF FAIRBRIDGE
“The skipper comes on deck to complain we are going too fast”
Left: Mate Emma Clifton – “mother substitute”
for Merseyside’ in the wake of the riots, and in 1985 Spirit of Merseyside, as she was called to begin with, slipped slowly into the deserted docks, a small symbol of hope in a troubled city. Since then, Spirit’s remit has remained the same: to address the effects of urban deprivation among the young. And she maintains strong links with Merseyside. She was refitted last winter at Cammell Laird’s yard in Birkenhead free of charge, and is supported by the Liverpool-based Bibby Line shipping company.
NIGHT WATCH I lie in my bunk as Spirit sails into the night, the waves thudding against the planking by my head. Time for my watch on deck; I struggle into my sea boots and oilies in the pitching cabin, and scramble up through the chart- house to join Kenny and the other crew members clustered around the ship’s wheel. Spirit is storming along in the dark, the deck heaving and white water rushing past the sides. The sense of speed is awesome, like driving a train down a railway tunnel.
Campbell is sensitive to the gripe that a trip on Spirit is a free holiday on a sailing boat, a “reward to bad kids,” and emphasises how tough the programme is for the young people involved. But he is perhaps the best argument for the Fairbridge approach – a confident, well-spoken young man with good prospects, who could so easily have slipped into a life of petty criminality, drugs and disaffection. Our night watch over, we tumble back down the companionway and into our bunks. It is dawn when I next go up on deck. Spirit is breasting the swell off the Dorset cliffs, the sun glistening on her wet deck and her sails spread wide like a gull’s wings. We enter the Needles Channel in the late afternoon, and moor alongside a pontoon in Cowes. With the ship made fast, we can all have a meal around the saloon table together for the first time since leaving Falmouth.
Eventually the skipper comes on deck to complain we are going too fast. If we don’t slow down we’ll be at the Portland Race too early. So we hand the mainsail, feeling for the ropes on the pin rails and clambering onto the rolling roof of the deckhouse to pass gaskets in the dark. The companionable gloom of a sailing ship’s deck at night is a place to share confidences. So I ask skipper Campbell Greer, just 22 years old, about his experience as a young person in the Fairbridge programme. “I started in Fairbridge when I was 14,” he said. “I was starting to get into trouble and getting kicked out of school quite a lot – into car crime and other bits and pieces. Fairbridge got me just in the nick of time. Young people need someone to believe in them, and Fairbridge does that. I started realising that there was potential there for me. I can do what I want: I can achieve anything I want... After a few short trips they offered me six months aboard Spirit.”
66 CLASSIC BOAT APRIL 2012
“A small symbol of hope in a troubled city”
“Actually, we find this one of the most valuable parts of a cruise on Spirit,” says Emma: “many of our young people have never sat round a table together to have a meal.” She admits with a laugh that, at 27, she is something of a mother substitute to the young people on
board, who often have no normal family life at home. “I even read them a bedtime story sometimes.” The next morning, as Spirit motors up Southampton
Water, I look around at the crew that has been put together for this delivery passage. We have shared so much: hoisting the heavy sails, standing watches in the dark, cooking and cleaning. I feel sad that this short passage is almost over.
A sailing ship is a small, self-sufficient society, where
everyone’s behaviour has a direct effect on everyone else. You rapidly get to know your fellow crew members, and develop a fierce pride in your vessel and your achievements together. If this still has such a strong emotional effect on me, after many passages in many vessels, how powerful must the experience be to a young person from the streets of Glasgow, Merseyside, or one of the other urban centres where Fairbridge works?
SPIRIT OF FAIRBRIDGE BUILT
Liverpool
SAIL NUMBER K 381 RIG
Gaff schooner HULL
Oak/iroko frames,
larch planks
LENGTH ON DECK 71ft 4in (21.7m,
LENGTH OVER SPARS 92ft (28m) BEAM
16ft 9in (5.1m) DRAUGHT
11ft (3.4m)
GROSS TONNAGE 81 Tonnes
STAFF BERTHS 6
CREW BERTHS 12
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