At Sea With the Sail Training Ship ROYALIST

At Sea With the Sail Training Ship ROYALIST

Sea Cadets often have the opportunity to go to sea on the T.S. Royalist. Above is a picture of the 29 metre long, square rigged brig (two masted with square sails) ship. The T.S. Royalist is of steal construction and has square sails on each of her 23 metre high aluminium masts.

When the T.S. Royalist sets to sea she takes 24 Sea Cadets between the ages of 13 and a half and 18 plus three adult volunteers. Whilst on board the cadets are split onto four watches and are supervised by six permanent crew.

The Truro Sea Cadets sent Leading Cadet Liz Walker pictured above standing in front of the Royalist for a trip to sea on her, during the Tall Ships race. Here is her account together with some pictures of her experience.

T.S. ROYALIST TALL SHIPS RACE 1998. 10^TH TO 28^TH AUGUST 1998

VIGO(PORTUGAL) TO DUBLIN(IRELAND)

After 24 hours of travelling (St Austell to Reading to Heathrow to Porto-Vigo.) We arrived in the brig in Vigo and had 1 day to go through the joining routine before setting sail for Dublin.

Half way through the vouyage the wind began to push us towards America which meant that we wearn’t going to get to Dublin in time to make sail for Gosport (Portsmouth UK) to participate in the International festival of the sea(26^th August). So we set sail for Falmouth (Cornwall UK) and then Cherbourg(France) and then went on to Gosport and made it in time.

Through out the voyage we were eating Spanish food (Which was OK to eat). We had normal cases of sea sickness (nearly everyone) and there was a little flu bug that went around the ship.

While we were at sea we were constantly changing sails, tacking, going on watch and catching up on sleep along with learning new skills. We also has to scrub the deck and clean the brig every morning., which wasn’t very exciting bit it has to be done. One day a week we were also on duty once a week which meant laying the tables for meals, serving the meals and cleaning and washing up afterwards.

I also made lots of friends all over Britain and had a great time in the place we visited(Vigo, Falmouth, Cherbourg and Portsmouth).

To me this voyage was brilliant and I have just booked another 15 day voyage on T.S. Royalist in July 1999.

Lix Walker

Leading cadet

A couple of pictures of Liz during her trip:

ABOVE LEFT IS LIZ WITH SOME OF THE CREW MATES THAT SHE WAS WITH ON THE T.S. ROYALIST.

A PICTURE OF LIZ STANDING AT THE STERN OF THE T.S. ROYALIST

GO TO THE T.S. ROYALIST WEB PAGE
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