It’s now 29 days until I leave my home on the Island of Jersey to begin my Deck Officer Cadetship at the City of Glasgow College.
I thought I would start a blog to share my experiences with everyone and hopefully inspire others to follow the route that I’m taking. Also thanks to sunsetoutatsea for giving me the idea to do this - go and check out her blog as well, I’m sure you will enjoy it.
I’ve lived in Jersey my whole life and always loved being on the sea, whether that was going fishing with my grandad, working as a watersports instructor, volunteering as a Sea Scout Leader or just going to the beach to relax. For a while I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life until 2017 when I met a former Captain who had been to sea and seen a lot of the world. It sounded fascinating and so with his support and encouragement I began pursuing a career as a Deck Officer - you know who you are so if you are reading this then I would like to say a massive thank you to you.
Being from Jersey rather limits my options due to government funding so there were only two companies available to sponsor me: Trinity House (managed by Chiltern Maritime) and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. I applied to both and after a successful interview with Chiltern and Trinity House, I was delighted to be told that they would like to offer me a cadetship. I will write more about my interview and what’s happened since in the next post as I’m aware this is getting quite long now.
Photo here is the sunset from being out on the RIB earlier this month. The two vessels in the photo are MV Arrow (left side) and a motorcruiser (right side). There was a great sized wake to jump the RIB over coming from the back of the motorcruiser and I got the RIB completely out the water from it.