12:36am:It’s Sue, Joesphine and Laura from Aft Port watch here! It’s the very beginning of Day 3 on The Lord Nelson and we are still in Falmouth thanks to the bad weather and Force 7 winds! It hasn’t held us back and we’ve got stuck into life on the ship. On the first day after we all arrived and had signed on we were introduced to the permanent crew, and then Neil the first mate, gave us a long safety briefing along with shorter ones from John the 2nd mate, Rachel chief engineer and Jo medical purser. We were also instructed into how to evacuate wheelchairs and their occupants from below decks in case of an emergency.
We experienced our first Happy hour on Friday, sweeping and polishing until Lord Nelson was shining! Due to the delightful weather conditions the whole voyage crew suited up for the first time in our fashionably yellow oilskins and wellies (we decided the trousers had actually been made for 2 people!) and got fitted with our climbing harnesses because ...we were going aloft! Both aft watches climbed up to the 1st platform on the main mast. The 2nd mate John and Nigel BM then showed us how to climb up onto the yard and a few brave / mental people had a go! We found hanging on a massive pole over a deck which was seemingly miles below strangely relaxing! After lunch, we turned into yellow jelly babies again to learn about bracing. After a demonstration from John we had a go ourselves, changing the position of the yards from sharp to starboard to square to sharp to port and back again. When we got off the ship after that to explore Falmouth, it was clear that we were the better team! We spent a couple of hours exploring Falmouth, getting cream teas and pasty’s and then relaxed before heaving ourselves out of bed to come on watch! We are hoping to set sail at 10:30 on the dot tomorrow and can’t wait to finally be out on the high seas!
Over and out from Aft Port xxx