Page 40 - MERCIAN Eagle 2018

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Sgt Evans & Sgt Macalpine-Gasse / Catching a river taxi to Wadi Shab / Wadi Shab, Oman / Sep 18
Watersports at Wadi Shab / Wadi Shab, Oman / Sep 18
to be a Hotel Manager. He then allowed us exclusive use of his facilities, it’s a small world!
We had 9 cycles of this 3-day package to complete throughout the exercise where the MLT’s walked either for basically 27 days
The calling notice went out and
1 MERCIAN seized the opportunity and released their RAPTCI (me) to be the co- ordinator of the sailing package.
Twenty years ago, His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said stated his vision to ‘release the Omani citizen’s creative energies, bring
mountainside between
two of the villages which
is where the locals grew
their regional produce
which varied from
Olives, Grapes and
Pomegranates, all of
which they would sell
locally for a good price.
Once the Cultural Walk
was complete there was an opportunity for all walkers to sample both the local cuisine and to make use of the heated swimming pool at a local Hotel complex. This Hotel was found by chance when Cpl Sherpa randomly bumped into somebody from his own village in Nepal that just so happened
AT – Sailing – SSgt (SSI) S Damon RAPTC
In addition to the obligatory tourist shopping in the local Souq’s, we managed to get out further afield to two of the country’s best tourist Wadi’s. We camped out overnight at one (Wadi Bani Khalid)
and just visited the other for the day (Wadi Shab which was used in 2012 for the Red Bull Cliff Diving competition), you can check them both out on YouTube as the pictures don’t really do them justice.
It would be fair to say that most experiences during SS3 will have differed slightly, ours probably did more than most but after 21 years of doing the green stuff, I won’t feel guilty when I say that we enjoyed this a lot.
out their latent talents and skills and enable them to make a greater contribution’. This triggered the creation of a company called Oman Sail with a purpose to rediscover Oman’s deep sailing heritage. Oman Sail run a national sailing programme which is delivered free to 1,500 school children per year and so they were a natural starting point for professional delivery of sail training to 1 MERCIAN BG.
The Chief Instructor was quite simply a sailing legend although he was unbelievably humble. Following an extensive Naval Career Saleh Al Jabri had captained a
9th century replica ‘Jewel of Muscat’ through treacherous waters from Oman to Singapore, amongst his crew was another instructor Mohammed Al Balushi. For his efforts, the captain was awarded the Oman medal of honour, an extremely prestigious award, but daily when he wasn’t instructing, he would be seen picking up litter or tidying the boat sheds along with all the other instructors.
Now that a credible and quality training provider had been sourced the task then came to fill the packages. 5 packages were agreed with the provisions that they had
It wasn’t all work though as we did manage to get a 5 day stand down between cycles 5 and 6.
During the planning phase for Exercise Saif Sareea 3, the Commander of 1 Armoured Infantry Brigade expressed a desire to conduct Adventurous Training (AT) as a Battlegroup and tasked his MTO, Capt Nick Hedges RIFLES, with the task of organising a multitude of packages.
THE MERCIAN EAGLE
5 or 10 miles a day
(great free phys). It wasn’t all work though as we did manage to get a 5 day stand down between cycles 5 and 6. Naturally we didn’t want to just remain in camp for those 5 days, so we managed to get out to see some more of OMAN.
WO1 (RSM) G Redfern present MERCIAN shield to Saleh Al Jabri and the Oman sail team. Manager, Mohammed Al Balushi is seen on far right / Oman / Oct 18