This year Maritime university in Gdynia (Poland) provided an opportunity to take seagoing practice for 23 first-year cadets-navigators on the sailing ship “Dar Młodzieży”. This three-masted frigate took part in the annual Regatta “THE TALL SHIPS RACES 2023”, which has been held since 2010!!!
In 2023, 31 frigates took part in Regatta, 13 of which were in Class A, as well as “Gift of Youth”.
https://sailtraininginternational.org/event/the-tall-ships-races-2023/
On May 24, we left the port of Gdynia (Poland) on the sailing ship and proceeded to the starting point of Regatta in Rouen (France), with the further ports of call in Bremerhaven (Germany), Den Helder (Netherlands), Hartlepool (England), Fredrikstad (Norway), Sirevag (Norway), Lerwick (Scotland), Arendal (Norway). During all three stages of Regatta from June 26 to August 3 (Netherlands – Great Britain; Great Britain, England – Norway and Great Britain, Scotland – Norway) 23 cadets from NUOMA provided sailing races.
On the 1st stage of the race the sailing ship “Gift of Youth” took the 5th place in its Class A (of thirteen ships) and the 9th place in the Overall ranking. On the 2nd stage –the ship won the race in its Class A!
To understand the Price of Victory in two of three stages of Regatta – I would like to give an example that the training frigate from Indonesia “BIMA SUCI” (built in 2017 as against ours, built in 1982) was COMPLETELY manned by cadets and crew (more than 100 of ones and the others) – and took the 17th place in the overall ranking!!!
There were 56 cadets on our sailing ship during the race (instead of 130 required by ship class! With 23 Ukrainians among them) – there weren`t enough people…
Air temperature in the North Sea was +8 in the morning and +15 during the day (in July!!!), walruses were swimming near the ship…
To sum up, thanks to this practice we received interesting and very useful experience and a lot of emotions. We have gone through plenty of exciting moments, which we`ll remember for our whole life!
