New Heights
The young sailor had a fear of heights.
Still, she was being asked to climb 115 feet to fix a flag that had become tangled in the lines. This was her chance to overcome her fears — and she did it.
By the time her adventure aboard a tall ship was over, she was crying, but not out of fear. “She was in tears about having to leave because she had such a wonderful experience,” says Claudia Bankert, who’s been sailing since she was 16 and volunteers as a crew member aboard the Roald Amundsen. “And that’s what sail training is. Accomplishing something that nobody — and, most of all, you — never thought you could do.”
This July, 35 Northeast Ohio students will have a similar experience when the tall ships come to Cleveland. The boys and girls — all under the age of 18 — were hand-selected for a three-night voyage aboard ships racing in the Great Lakes United Tall Ships Challenge.
“Outward bound is a nautical term that implies you’re leaving the safety of the harbor — the safety and security of everything you know — for the unknown,” says Marcia Mauter, director of the Institute for Creative Leadership in Cleveland, which facilitated a team-work-building training session for the students. “The whole idea is to get rid of the distractions and just be with the people you’re with in really challenging ways that test your mettle. Those are the learning moments you’re going to remember for the rest of your life.”
It’s an incredible voyage, but hardly a vacation.
Once onboard, there’s work to be done, says Eileen Smotzer, a member of the Rotary Club of Cleveland, which is sponsoring the youth sails. “Each ship has a mission and a set of responsibilities and duties that all of the students — no matter if it’s a bad day, a good day, a rainy day, a sunny day or maybe they have a little bit of seasickness — all of the students are expected to be part of that crew.”
Or, as Roald Amundsen captain Hugo Bauer says more succinctly, “There are no passengers. They have to work.” Students, he says, steer the ship, act as lookouts, clean and help in the kitchen.
They also learn to watch out for one another.
“There’s one rule on every ship I’ve ever been on,” says Bankert. “The ship comes first, your shipmates come second and you come third.”
All of the students participated in a sailing boot camp, which focussed on increasing the collaboration and trust among the group, recognizing the strengths that each person brings, and building peer leadership skills.
“It’s an awe-inspiring experience standing at the wheel, driving this 200-foot machine of wind and muscle through the dark seas at 3 o’clock in the morning, maybe during a storm, maybe in the freezing cold,” says Bankert. “We all have the same goal: to get from point A to point B in one piece. You get this sense of responsibility within yourself for the ship and for the well-being of everybody.”
10 Must-see Tall Ships
Story:
Miranda Miller
July/August 2010