RAOC Gazette - page 144
Image details
| Corps | RAOC |
|---|---|
| Material type | Journals |
| Book page | |
| Chapter head | |
| Chapter key | |
| Chapter number | |
| Full title | RAOC Gazette |
| Page number | |
| Publication date | 1977 |
| Real page | |
| Colour | No |
| Grey | No |
| Early date | 1977 |
| Late date | 1977 |
| Transcription |
THE WIIITBRKAD TRI ROUND SERVICE THK W O R L D SELECTION RACE TRIALS CORPORAL A. O'CONNOR, VEIIICLK DEPOT CYPRUS HAVING made up my mind, after a couple of days considera- tion, to have a go at the selection trials for the Whitbread Round the World sailing race the forms were completed and despatched and on the 7th March 1 received a letter requesting my presence at Mons Barrack Aldershot on the 16th March. Sergeant Jim Massey, our orderly room sergeant, managed, through all his contacts to book me on a flight to Brize Norton on the 15th. Now all 1 had to do was be successful in the selection trials. The race itself is being organised as a joint services ex- pedition using HM Sail Training Yacht Adventure, a fifty five foot Camper and Nicholson designed and built yacht already proven on the last two round the world yacht races. The initial trials for each service were to be used to select thirty individuals to go forward to inter services trials. After the inter services trials sixteen crew members would be selected to represent their service on one of the four legs of the race. All I knew about the initial selection was that the letter had said to take old clothes, a sleeping bag, DMS boots and swim- ming costume and that I was to expect the going to get dirty. This information did not prepare me for what was to come after my arrival at Mons Barracks suffering from jet lag and British Rail lag (four changes from Swindon to Aldershot) on a cold and very wet Tuesday evening. On my arrival I was given a white bib with a number 9 on it and this was to be my new identity, ' White 9. 1 This meant that I was the ninth member of a white team of twelve which, was one of the eight teams remaining in the trials. Al- ready the applicants had been reduced from three hundred to ninety six and only forty five of us would go to Portsmouth for the next stage, I was also allocated a wet section of floor in a condemned building for my sleeping bag and then the fun really started. The first item on the agenda was the most exhausting and demanding exercise I had ever done in my life, a one and a half mile log race then over a six foot wall, a water jump, a nine foot wall and finally a ditch with very steep banks. All this in pouring rain with a specially trained pack of PTI Sergeants shouting and screaming abuse at us all the time. I think they hated us and by the end of the race I knew that I hated them, well that's what it felt like anyway. Seamanship tests came next covering safety, navigation, knots, splices, whipping and sail mending. The PTI Sergeants were not to be forgotten however, as next came the assault course. No ordinary assault course would do, this one was used to train the Para's. We had to go round twice and then move straight on to the confidence area which meant climbing a thirty foot high tower at the top of which we had to stand upright on two one and a half inch diameter poles, walk forward stop, touch toes, stand up and then continue walking to the other side. Easy?, try it! Next exercise was to climb a tree, then cross a plank to another tree, across a log to an- other, then a rope bridge and finally down a scramble net. The PTI Sergeant thought I had done very well and immediately sent me up again to help the chap who had frozen with fear on the rope bridge. I was really growing to like these PTI's. We were then allowed to go to tea, which I ate out of mess tins with a British Rail plastic fork, and then made to run six times round a four hundred metre track. Running was more my line but I did wish that I hadn't eaten so much. The evening was pleasantly filled with a party. Beer, butties and films and slides of GB II on the 1974 Clipper race. I went to sleep that night with my hands under my backside trying to keep the sleeping bag off the wet floor. 0200 hrs! awakened by PTI shouting and screaming, pitch black in room looking for shoes etc then chased outside and lined up in teams, freezing cold rain dripping down ones neck. We then ran in teams to the Gymnasium for circuit training then on to the swimming pool, stripped off only wearing * bib * and then in the dark, pushed off a fifteen foot high platform, swam four lengths of the pool and made to dress without first getting dry. Ran back to lovely damp sleeping bag. 0700 hrs that morning found us on the banks of the dirty, stinking, stagnant Basingstoke Canal. Start of the initiative test. Six telegraph poles, three forty five gallon drums, twelve bits of rope and a stretcher with two layers of building bricks laid out on it. The objective was to build a bridge across the canal and get the stretcher plus bricks across without getting it wet. We broke the record and completed the manoeuvre in fifteen minutes but not without the whole team having to go in the Canal, * Yack!' I managed to find an old pram in the middle to stand on. This helped me because stood on this pram the water was only knee deep but confused some team mates as they stepped in up to their necks! I was one of first bunch to go to Gosport for the sailing part of the Army trials. The two boats used, HMSTY Kukri and Sabre, both Nick 55's had not long come out of the Dock Yard and we were the first to sail there this season. Who else is daft enough in March? The first night we spent settling in. Most of us went to bed early, tired out, backs aching and chests heaving. The next day Dave Lesley, the fastest man to sail round the world, put us through our paces. All that day was spent tacking, jibbing, sail changing, resting and ensuring that a bow- line could be tied one handed, behind ones back, underwater, stood on your head. Second day spinnaker work using storm spinnaker and No. 1 genoa to simulate a big blow. Harry Holder, a medic stationed at Netley as a PTI, was doing his stint at the wheel when all the steering dropped to pieces. The look on his face had every- body falling about in fits of laughter until it was realised that with no steering, and so much sail up, the boat was coming up to wind on a collision course with Kukri, I had just passed full cups of hot tea up into the cockpit but got them all back, thrown at me as everybody ran forward to get the for- sails down before they shredded round the forestay. By using different combinations of sails we steered long enough to fix the steering. The cause, a deficiency of a split pin on a crown nut holding a track rod end. Third day spinny jibs with twin pole and dip pole. Also uses of the jocky pole. Fourth day crews changed boats. Kukri being cutter rigged and more like Adventure was used to give everybody the extra experience. With two sets of sheets and running back- stays to think of, this makes for hard work but the three speed winches helped. Fifth day, Kukri and Sabre race. Nab tower to Bern- bridge Ledge to a buoy north of Nab. twice. Beating with cutter rig, a reach with the No. 1 genoa into a run using radial spin- naker. Sabre won. That was a good enough excuse for a get together in the club house, also it was the last night of our selection trials. I had packed" m v bags ready to return to Cyprus but all had been arranged for me to stay on at Gosport as Bosun of Sabre, helping as part of the crew on the next two weeks of the selection until the tri-services selection started. Pip Elliot of the Green Howards had the same luck on Kukri. So we cele- brated in the launderette. The next two weeks took on the same syllabus except the second week we raced to Alderaey and the third around the Isle of Wight. One day in the last week, taxiing a certain organiser to Cowes, gusts of wind, fifty knots and over, laid us nearly flat and had Dave jumping about with glee, Allan Wilkinson, (Captain Retd RAOC) the permanent skipper of Kukri enjoyed having an experienced crew to handle the boat in such conditions instead of the inexperienced ones he takes all over the world. Note to all Cyprus sailors, Allan or one of the other NICK fifty five skippers are planning on bringing one of the fifty fives to Cyprus for six weeks around October time. I gained eighteen solid days of big boat sailing by the time I went through to the inter service trials. One particular experience was on Sabre, skippered by Ron Gravel, when the prop fell off and we had to sail into Haslar creek using the ketch anchor thrown over the bows to do some sharp turning now and then, but Ron got us alongside with no problems, The first week of the inter service trials took place aboard HMSTY Chaser and Adventure, I was lucky to be chosen for the latter. {Continued on page 134.) 108 |
| Book number | R0246 |