Arriving onboard Lord Nelson

The next morning we checked out of the hotel, managed to get everything back in the car and headed towards Kotka. The scenery was very similar to what we’d seen arriving in the plane: Trees. Lots of them!! Pretty much the whole road was lined all the way to Kotka. Finnish driving is pretty interesting. Once we got down to the one lane road, everyone hugs to the far right of the lane meaning people can over take by straddling the centre line. It’s a bit nerve wracking at first but once I got the hang of it I sailed past people!

It was fairly easy to find the Lord Nelson once we got to Kotka as Tall Ships banners were everywhere and once at the harbour, the JST banner was easy to spot. We blagged our way through the checkpoint to get the car into the harbour where Pete, Kate and Leanne got out and took all the luggage aboard. Dannie and I headed off to find where to drop the car off. It was actually fairly easy (thanks to directions at a petrol station) although it was pretty much the other side of the town.

It was quite strange being back on board but very familiar. We almost straight away got to see some familiar faces in Neville and Peter who were onboard. There were a few familiar faces in the permanent crew too: our Captain was Clare again and the First Engineer was Pickles, much to Pete’s delight. We got to meet the remaining permanent crew at the voyage briefing. The First Mate was called Steve and was a short barrel of a man with a brilliant sense of humour. Just to complete the nautical package he had a full beard and smoked a pipe. The Second Mate was delayed due to a JST cock up on her flight, but was called Allison. She was very nice although due to watch timings (see later) we didn’t get much chance to meet her properly. The Bosun was called Natalie and was very different to our previous Bosuns being (a) a girl, (b) young and (c) very pretty. The seThe medical purser was a lovely lady called Carol and to complete the PC, the cook was called John. The Bosun’s mates were Matt, Joyce (the voice) and John (who had been cook on one of our previous voyages) and the cook’s assistant was called Mona.

We had a full watch of nine: our watch leader was called Helen, then there was Pete, Kate, Dannie and I plus three ladies called Fiona, Liz and Beryl. Finally there was a 20 year old girl called Freya and an officer cadet called Matt. Matt had been on board for a while and would spend most of the voyage getting experience of the various duties of being an officer of the watch.

The following morning was time to set sail and, despite a plan for each ship to leave in five minutes getting to us by 8:45, we weren’t too late off and were soon making our way up the channel to our holding area about 9:30. We were very close to the largest Class A ship, the Russian Sedov. It wasn’t too long for us to wait before we joined the cruise in company out of the harbour. We were just behind the Mexican ship Cuatemol and in front of the Irish Asgard. It was an amazing spectacle with all the smaller boats around us and lots of launches lining the route. We passed a small island about half way through which gave each ship a gun salute although they hadn’t worked out which way the wind was blowing as the smoke quickly engulfed the island. The end of the cruise was past a naval ship with a Finnish dignitary on board that we had to wave at.

Soon all was behind us and we headed out into open waters.

Our first day was fairly peaceful. Little wind and therefore the sea was nice and calm and a good chance for a read and a snooze. Our first watch was from 6-8 in the afternoon so a nice easy one to break us in. We were under engine too so helming wasn’t difficult and there were plenty of interesting things to look at whilst on watch. The other advantage of our watch pattern was that we got to have a full nights sleep as our next watch was the morning watch from 8 till 12:30. Plus a few beers.