August-September 2008

My third and fourth voyages, both on Stavros S Niarchos, were within almost three weeks of one another.

SSN341 took place from Den Helder in Holland, and finished in Southampton. The Tall Ships Races 2008 ended in Den Helder, where I joined the ship. I wished I could have taken part in one of the legs of the races, but unfortunately the expenses were too high at the time.

The celebrations in Den Helder were spectacular. There was a crew party for any and all of the crews of the ships that took part in the races, and two nights where fireworks and fog horn tooting took place after 10pm. Of course, those of us on board Stavros S Niarchos at the time got involved with the tooting. At a guess, most if not all of the ships in the harbour had a part in that.

I'd arrived on August 21st in the evening, but we didn't leave until the afternoon of the 23rd. We were going to be taking part in the Parade of Sail, where the Dutch Prince was going to pass by on his ship as we and the other tall ships departed. That actually happened to be quite fun; it involved shouting the "oggy oggy" chant (of which 'oggy' means pasty to the Cornish people - don't ask where the chant came from as I have no idea), and Mexican waves.

During this voyage we visited the small French port of Dieppe. Unfortunately, we didn't have a great deal of time there, but it's quite a placid and pretty place to visit. If we'd spent longer there I'd have liked to have gone to see some of the local history - that is if anyone else was interested as there's a rule that we all travel in groups.

The end of the voyage I'll not really talk much about as there was a bit of an incident involving under age drinking and drunkenness which almost turned nasty. The moral of the story is to stick to the rules no matter what to avoid dangerous situations, and above all, to avoid ruination of the voyage.

The second of these two voyages was SSN345, Portsmouth to Cork, which took place between 20th-27th September. I'm partial to Portsmouth, and two reasons why are: HMS Victory is there (I love that ship), and it's a very nice coastal city. It's quite clean unlike some of the other areas of the UK coastline. The water is also blue in the English Channel rather than that dull grey colour of the North Sea.

We visited Falmouth for an evening and a morning on this voyage. Whilst we were sitting outside a pub called The Chainlocker & Shipwrights, my watchleader from my Caribbean voyage turned up! At first I didn't recognise him (in my opinion he looks like one of the deckhands we had on board at the time). He didn't stick around for very long, but it was a pleasure to meet him again.

Following that, we went on to a very quaint little port in Southern Ireland called Kinsale. I managed to see some of the local history there, and it was much more interesting than I thought it would have been. The history behind Desmond Castle and the International Museum of Wine there is something that we should all read up on if we're interested in European history.

Then, we went on to Cork. The next morning (the day we disembarked), I visited a nearby town called Cobh (pronounced Cove), where there St. Colman's Cathedral stands. Its foundation stone was laid in 1868, and I wasn't aware that cathedrals were still being built to such designs at that point. It's just as beautiful as cathedrals built long before it.

Of course, then I headed back to the ship and got ready to leave. Me and one of the watchleaders took a taxi to the airport where we parted ways and I flew back to London to catch my coach back to Norwich.