Saturday 26 July 2008

Floating on prayers...

We finally had our pool test this evening and I think we can both say that it was a very fun experience. The treading water was no problem at all - we both felt completely confident to do it and managed being in the water the whole time with no problems at all. We did all of the drills without lifejackets except when they were part of the drill and feel acutely aware of all the prayers that have been said on our behalf over the last two months.



We had to do a variety of different things:

  • jump in with life jacket and then swim 20m
  • tread water
  • get into liferaft from poolside
  • throw the sea anchor
  • get into the liferaft from the water
  • put on a gumby suit in less than 2 minutes (the big red sea survival wetsuits)
  • jump in in the gumby suit
  • form a string of people in the suits and manouver around while joined together
  • get in to the liferaft in the gumby suits (hilarious!)
  • turn over the liferaft after it had capsized (also good fun)
The good news is that we now have a five year Basic Safety Training certificate from the US Coast Guards meaning we could get a job anywhere in the world on a tug boat, a fishing boat, a container ship... (just a shame Sarah gets seasick!)

We followed up with an all you can eat Pizza meal at CiCi's where we pigged out a bit too much after all of the exertion. We have our last 3 hours tomorrow for debrief and people start leaving straight after.

We will miss all of the people on the course and hope to meet up with them again soon on the Africa Mercy.

Tommy and Sarah

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Glad to hear you had a blast. I knew you two could pull it off. Look forward to the last 3 official hours together.
Nari