Page 19 - RADC 2016

Gosport on 25 July 15 and she’d already had quite an adventure before welcoming her new AMS crew (that’s me & LCpl K) aboard in St Lucia on 23 May 16. The crews of previous legs (lead by the R.Sigs, RE, Infantry, REME, Int Corps and the RLC)
had ensured safe passage from Gosport to Lanzarote, to Rio de Janeiro, to Cape Town, to Perth, to Wellington and to Montevideo before delivering her to us.
We were delighted to make Disco our home for the next 3 weeks and it was ‘action stations’ immediately. As we were required to be self-suf cient at sea the initial planning and estimate process involved calculating how many tonnes of milk, eggs and biscuits would be required to sustain us. We had new survival and sailing kit to square away and quickly established a ‘watch routine’. The crew of 15 was split into three ‘watches’ of 4 sailors, then there’s the Skipper, 1st mate and 2nd mate. The shift pattern for the duration of time spent at sea was 4 hours ‘on watch’ (ie. Sailing the boat), 4 hours ‘off watch’ (ie. Sleeping) for 48 hours, followed by 24 hours of ‘Mother watch’...and repeat. The duties of ‘Mother
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