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EDITORIALWelcome to this issue of Revelations, filled with news and stories from the end of the 1998 season. Thank you to those people who have contributed to this issue. Please do keep sending in pieces (stories from trips, pictures, thoughts, etc) for inclusion in Revelations as it is your contributions which make up this newsletter. Please send any contributions for the next issue of Revelations into the office by 1 March 1999. Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year. Will NEWSTim writes...End of a busy seasonMorning Star didn’t stop to draw breath until the first week in October, after which it was mostly weekends, except for the very windy half term trip that Liz has written about. Finally, on November 9th, the biggest crane ever (250ton) lifted the boats out onto anchor wharf, in much the same place as last winter. So ended a most encouraging season. Morning Star was in use for a total of just on 22 weeks, the highest take up for some years. After a slow start, Eagles Wings was also busy. Refit for the millenniumSteve Morgan has taken charge of the winter refit of the boats, with Chris as engineering expert and with Liz and Pete as resident team. The aim is to do as much as possible of the basic work needed to prepare Morning Star for Tall Ships 2000. This winter also a full survey is due plus recertification under the Small Commercial Vessels Code of Practice. Our surveyor, Graham Booth, is working through the survey over a number of visits. So far he has not discovered anything too disastrous. Meanwhile there are some definite changes in the pipeline: French Cooking?Our gas cooker has reached the end of its life (announced by the burners rusting away to nothing!) and in any case the recertification means that we must have flame failure on all burners. Such a beast is not available in UK, so Steve has already made one exploratory run to Boulogne, where he has located a suitable unit. It comes with a mains electric grill, which of course we shall be able to use with the generator. All he has to do now is find someone with good enough French to place an order over the phone (Steve had trouble with the French for “flame failure device”), then take his car over to collect it. Formidable! GMDSS and all thatNew distress calling technology and regulations mean we need a new VHF radio on Morning Star, in any case the faithful old Husun is getting temperamental. Buying and installing the new set is one thing, upgrading all our qualifications under the new rules is quite another. Jemma is organising updating courses, and by next season most of our skippers and mates should be qualified to operate the new equipment. For 2000 we also need GMDSS equipment that operates world-wide. We plan to invest in Inmarsat C, a satellite system that is effectively email. This is going to be useful, not just in mid Atlantic in 2000, but whenever the boat is out of UK mobile phone range. Believe it or not, a fridgeThe locker known as P4 is being adapted to hold a refrigerator, now that we have plenty of electrical power to run it off (it will mostly use mains power from the generator when running). Unlike the other items mentioned above, this one has been delivered and the work is in hand. Money againAs usual, all this new equipment will be expensive. In addition a new suit of sails is becoming a priority, especially for 2000. Jemma has a fund raising appeal running for the sails, but this has a long way to go. Hammond Innes LegacyThe author Ralph Hammond Innes died in June this year. In his will he left the bulk of his estate to the Association of Sea Training Organisations, of which the Morning Star Trust is a member. The sum in question turns out to be in excess of £5million! To cut a long story short, we should be able to benefit by an annual sum around 8 to 10 times larger than our present allocation from the ASTO bursary fund. This year we were allocated £4,000, but were not able to use it all owing to restrictions on how it is used. This new money should be much more flexible in how it may be used, but the details have yet to be worked out. The scheme will not start until 2001 owing to the Lloyds three year rule (he was a member of numerous Lloyds syndicates), so although it is marvellous news, it makes no difference at all to our current needs and funding efforts. 1999The new brochure is published here on the web, so I won’t go all through what is on offer, just point you to the brochure to see what you might get involved in during the coming year. There are still places on Tall Ships, though TS1 is quite well booked. Old hands looking for something different might consider the two week cruise home from Denmark, or the Scottish Adventure cruises. The latter are being organised for us by our man on the spot, Colin Rettie, and are effectively a pilot for other possible charter operations to help fill the gap when Morning Star is away for much of the season in 2000. Tall Ships 2000 – Progress reportA separate brochure for this spectacular event is now available from our office. If you are interested in TS2000 and have not had one, please call in and we can send you one by return. People have begun to register in response to the brochure and we hope to see our crews for the various legs building up over the next few months. Meanwhile Mike Maconochie is heading up a planning committee for the event and this has its first proper meeting on December 17th in London. Among matters to discuss are manning, sponsorship, and how to make the opportunity known to the widest possible range of appropriate people. Staff newsWith Steve and Jemma giving us their time and energy until next September, we currently equal the largest ever full time staff here in the Dockyard. Those two have both recently passed and become Yachtmaster Instructors. Even more important, Steve has been accepted by the Church of England for training for ordination, so their plans are on course for a move to Cambridge next autumn. Chris was away for most of the summer, but is now firmly back in harness and tackling all matters engineering with his usual efficiency and ingenuity. He is a real volunteer – we don’t pay him a single penny. Our two new “standard” volunteers, Liz and Pete, seem to be well settled in under all headings – domestic, work, church and evening classes for RYA shorebased theory. That leaves me, sitting in the nice warm office! Happy Christmas, enjoy the brochure, and stay in touch. THE WINDIEST WEEK?by Liz Golledge I don’t know if it was the windiest week of the year but it certainly felt like it. The final trip of the season, an individuals week. The forecast was for huge amounts of wind. I was a little nervous to say the least, but thankfully I had the confidence of Richard (Skipper) and Jemma (1st mate) to reassure me in my role as inexperienced second mate! So, we set off down the Medway in a force 8 gusting 10, which was exciting. First port of call (as always) was Stangate creek, where sleeping was optional thanks to wind and halyard noise, not to mention the worry of the risk of dragging anchor. Next morning we were up bright and early ready for a jaunt up the East coast to Brightlingsea. The Morning Star Games reared their head, such as La-di-da, the evolution game, the biscuit game and the “squirty cream” game (or are they just Richard’s games?), and were enjoyed by all. Thankfully we had a lull in the wind on Monday and we had a pleasant sail from Brightlingsea down to Harty Ferry. We had time (and just enough tide) to visit Faversham, which did wonders for crew morale (not to mention 2nd mate morale). The plan for Tuesday was to have some dinghy practice in the morning, until high tide (about midday) and then go through the Swale to Queenborough. But, you guessed it, plenty of wind meant that knot practice, bread baking and yet more silly games were all that were possible. On top of that the tide was late, because of the weather. Not just a little bit late, but two hours! However, the water finally arrived and we made it through the Swale (bucket in the rigging, dodgy echosounder and all). After a couple of goes and a lost fairlead, we got onto the concrete barge at Queenborough, ready for some more silly games. Wednesday was a relatively mundane hard beat up the river in a gentle force six, back to Thunderbolt pier. Back safe and sound, the boat and crew had held together well, all weather considered, and they loved it. Why is it that when the weather is mad everyone has the time of their lives? All glory to God, though, because it was definitely his strength (not mine) which got me through the week. I’m sure it’s not the last time. THOUGHT FOR THE QUARTERSome thoughts about the festive season: Christmas celebrates God’s gift to us of his Son and we celebrate this by giving and receiving presents. We should give in the way that God gave Jesus, that is generously and without counting any sacrifice and we should receive gratefully. So how does Christmas relate to the life of the Morning Star Trust? Christmas is a time of year when we tend not to go sailing, unless you enjoy sailing in the cold or are sailing the other side of the world. However the vision of the Trust is to give people, especially young less advantaged people, the opportunity to learn to sail. We also endeavour to give them a glimpse of what God’s gift to us in his Son means to us, with the hope that they will then want to receive that same gift. So whilst the boats may not be sailing at Christmas time, the Trust is about giving. The Trust like all aspects of God’s work also requires us to give (and it is not just money), we are called to give our whole lives to God. Where as giving presents at Christmas is easy, (although I always struggle to find a present for my Mother!) the giving of our lives to God is somewhat harder. I worship God, I give time to my church, I give money to charity etc, but I really struggle with the concept of giving my whole life to serve God. However God has got it covered, we just need to ask him for help and through his grace he will give us what we need to overcome our reluctance. So this New Year instead of making a new year’s resolution which if you are anything like me might last until the end of January, why not consider asking God to help us to give more of ourselves to him, after all even though it will be hard, it will be worth it. LISBON TO VIGO (TALL SHIPS 1998)by Beth Butler On the Tall Ships transfer this year from Lisbon to Vigo your favourite boat was known as ‘Morning Star of Revel(s)’ (on official paperwork) - this was more apt than you might imagine! We left Lisbon in hot, sunny, windy weather but arrived in Vigo in fog banks with visibility sometimes less than 500 yards. This made navigation ‘interesting’ when attempting to raft alongside ‘Astrid’ in an anchorage of about 50 boats! Despite the varied weather we had a fantastic trip visiting islands off the coast and enjoying the company of dolphins. Steve, Brandon and Lucy were brilliant in the face of a number of technical difficulties including a broken spreader - at last the two are equal in length! Anyone sailing with Steve will know that he dislikes cameras being left on deck; the penalty is a photo of feet. Well this year Steve is the proud owner of a ‘feet photo’. I am sorry to report a high level of insanity on board ‘Morning Star
of Revels’ - the reason, I can only assume, was the high temperatures in
Portugal. The following incidences all occurred during the trip:
FUND-RAISINGJemma writes.... As you are probably aware, we, like most charities, have more expenditure than income. In the past we have had projects and pieces of equipment to raise money for as well as the salaries of the base team running the trust. This winter, Morning Star is out of the water for the last time before the Tall Ships 2000 millennium race series crossing the Atlantic and coming back. Before then Morning Star needs a fairly long list of items, so that is now the object of our fund-raising. One of the biggest items of expenditure is a new set of sails which are needed for the 1999 season and will cost a total of £8,545. Split down into the 2,300 square feet of sail Morning Star carries, that works out at £3.71 per square foot. Enclosed with [the printed copy] of Revelations you will find a ‘penalty calendar’ for January 1999. If everyone who receives Revelations completed the month and found enough for, say two square feet of sail, we would be £3,000 nearer the target, so please do make an effort. I shall look forward to a flurry of envelopes hitting my desk on about the fourth of February! For anyone else who is interested, we are also having to purchase new radio equipment costing around £3,365, as well as installing a fridge unit, a new cooker and possibly a water maker. If you have any fund-raising ideas for these items, please let us know. FROM THE ALTERNATIVE LOG....On entering the galley: “Ladies, you’re doing a wonderful job….I would love to help you, but the pressures of command call me elsewhere” Pete (trainee second mate).
Please send any contributions that you have for the next issue of REVELATIONS to the office by 1 March 1999. Thank you! |
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