Page 137 - AGC-Journal-2016
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AGC JOURNAL 2016
Exercise
Northern Floating Keys
By Lieutenant Anthony Myers
food to keep us going for the week. On and the sea were both pretty calm for the
day two the rest of the crew arrived sail across, which allowed the skippers to
and after some brief introductions and hand over to the crew and let them sail the
collecting their foul weather kit we yachts. This gave them the opportunity
began with some low level training. The to practice tacking, jibbing and man
crew was made up of mostly novices, overboard drills with little input from the
out of the twelve on the expedition, only skippers, but did inevitably end in a race
four had ever sailed before, meaning between the two yachts. We reached our
that the training Darren Cattle provided first stop on Aero mid-afternoon, which
was especially useful. The training gave the crews time to purchase some ice
consisted of learning about the different creams and enjoy the sunshine before
parts of the boat, which rope pulls heading out to watch a disappointing
which sail and ended with some man draw from the England v Russia game.
overboard drills, which gave the crews
the confidence that Darren and I could Returning To Port
pick them out of the water if they were
to accidently fall in. We spent a couple more days sailing
around Aero, testing the novice sailors in
Out At Sea high winds with plenty of sail changes and
some tacking and jibbing before heading
Exercise Northern Floating The two yachts headed north on day back towards Germany to hand the yachts
Keys was a level 3 Adventurous three to Kappeln. As the inexperienced back. Both crews continued to stay in good
Training expedition which took skipper I was expecting to follow Darren spirits on route back despite the change
in weather. Besides the rain the sail back
until I’d gained a little more confidence,
place in June 2016. Members but he put an end to that idea 500 to Kiel was largely uneventful, accept for
of 2 Signal Regiment along metres out of the harbour, when he when I dropped the ensign in the sea and
with our paired reserve unit stopped dead in the water and waved we had to test out our man overboard
drills. I tried to dress it up as another
me passed. The initial sail out of Kiel
32 Signal Regiment, took over went reasonably well with a steady training serial, but I feel everybody knew
yachts Teal and Pochard and hand on the helm; our only issue was what had really happened. Once back
at Kiel we enjoyed a last pint together
when another member of the crew took
spent seven days control of the yacht and the crews exchanged stories from the
sailing to various and put it into a 360 successful expedition before flying back
degree spin within 20
ports in the Baltic seconds, which sent home.
Sea. the boom, the crew
and most importantly
everybody’s cup of tea,
Initial Training flying in all directions.
Warrant Officer Class 1 Danish Waters
Darren Cattle, Staff Sergeant
Paul Strange and myself After a night spent eating
flew out to the British Kiel mountains of ribs and
Yacht Club in Germany a drinking a reasonable
day before the rest of the amount of German beer
crew in order to take over in Kappeln, the two crews
the yachts and fill the headed for the Danish
cupboards with enough island of Aero. The weather
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