Share this
Mister Wong
Digg
Del.icio.us
Slashdot
Furl
Yahoo
Technorati
Newsvine
Googlize this
Blinklist
Facebook
Wikio
Hear this text
Export PDF
Print
E-mail
Tags
Landlubber from Joburg lured by old-time sailsI must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky; And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.” With these words, the poet John Masefield immortalised the romanticism of the tall sailing ship in his poem, Sea-Fever.
Growing up far from the sea in Johannesburg, Thandeka Snail had absolutely no idea that she too, 100 years after the poem was written, would experience the romantic lure of the tall ship.
For 25-year-old Sublieutenant Snail, now an officer in the South African Navy, it was the opportunity of a lifetime when the Argentinian navy last year invited her to join their classical sail training ship, the ARA Libertad, for a journey lasting several months. She became the first South African woman as well as the first black woman to do so.
The Libertad is used annually by the Argentinian navy to send its junior officers on an eight-month training course, sailing around the world. Captain Gustavo Díaz Durán, the military attaché of the Argentine Embassy in South Africa, calls her the pride and joy of
their navy.
What makes Thandeka’s sailing opportunity even more remarkable is that until she joined the South African Navy (SAN) in 2003, she had never seen any kind of ship up-close before, let alone set foot on one.
In fact, the only ship she had seen as a child, apart from those on television, was a merchant vessel far out at sea that she had watched from the beach as it passed Durban.
Thandeka, the youngest of seven children of Phillan and Christina Snail, grew up in Ennerdale, south of Johannesburg and matriculated at Oakdale Secondary School, believing she would become a pilot in the South African Air Force.
After matriculating in 2002, she joined the Youth Foundation Training Programme run by the Department of Defence. It is a programme aimed at the development of young people from previously disadvantaged communities and focuses on the upgrading of matriculation results, particularly in subjects such as mathematics and science, to prepare candidates for a military career.
And, that is where life changed dramatically for the young Thandeka.
She was selected to join the Navy and in 2003, commenced with basic training in Saldanha Bay. After that followed officer’s training in Gordons Bay and studying for a diploma in military management at the Military Academy in Saldanha. By then, she had become a combat officer and navigator – a world away from her shipless childhood.
“During my training as an officer, I had my very first experience aboard a ship when, as part of my training, we sailed from Durban to Simon’s Town,” she recalls.
Thandeka completed her practical training in Simon’s Town and did a combat officer’s qualification course for about nine months.
That was followed by her first posting on-board the SAS Amatola, the first of South Africa’s brand-new German-built frigates. Presently, Thandeka is the ship’s assistant operations officer, but is also standing in as navigator while the Amatola’s regular navigator is away attending a course.
For Thandeka, the opportunity of a lifetime to go sailing on a tall ship from another era came about through what is common protocol among the navy crew of the world. When ships from foreign navy crews visit a country, they often send out an invitation to the host navy to nominate candidates to join them on-board for a limited period as their guest.
Having been nominated by her officer commanding and approved by Pretoria, she soon received a call to join the ARA Libertad when it visited Cape Town last year.
In 2006, Thandeka was a guest on-board the American warship, the USS Ross, which she joined in Athens, Greece for two weeks. On that voyage, they also visited Italy and France. But the Libertad was a unique experience.
Thandeka stayed on-board the Libertad from the moment she arrived in Cape Town on 26 April, becoming one of the crew, until she flew back to South Africa two-and-a-half months later on 10 July. At sea, she wore the working uniform of the Argentine navy, but whenever they went alongside in some port, she wore her SAN uniform.
The ship was what she calls “a totally new experience”.
“It took some getting used to. It was not scary, though. It is a fairly big ship with four masts. The fastest we ever sailed was about 11 knots.
“We did use full sails whenever the wind permitted. That is a beautiful sight when you get to the upper deck and you see all these sails and it is so nice and shady underneath them. You can also move around on the deck from aft to foredeck, which you can’t do on a modern warship like the Amatola.
“I enjoyed the people very much, although I could not speak Spanish. The Argentinians are very friendly people. I learnt a little Spanish and many of the people on board could speak English, so we could communicate. I made some very special friends and am still in touch with most of them. They are from Argentina, India, one from Chile, and one from New Zealand,” she says.
The trip took her to Mauritius, Seychelles, India, Malaysia and on to the Philippines, from where she flew back to South Africa.
Although already more qualified than the Argentinian junior officers on-board, she underwent the same training, helping to put up sails and assisting with watches out at sea.
“I climbed up the mast as well, but I will never do it again. It’s quite dodgy when you use a rope to get up the mast while the ship is rolling beneath you, even despite wearing a safety harness. I did that just once and I will never, ever again do it,” she says.
Learning about sails and sailing was the one thing that was different from anything she had learnt before. She also enjoyed learning about the various naval cultures and found the Argentinian approach to naval training to differ considerably from her own in terms of the length of time spent on courses and in a particular rank.
“I really admired the attitude of the people on-board this ship. No matter the language difficulties, they really welcomed everybody and made everybody feel so at home on board. That was fantastic, it was fun,” she remembers. Thandeka was also fortunate not to have any bad experiences or experience any really rough seas.
Right now she is back on-board the Amatola where her officer commanding Captain Michael Girsa talks with pride of his young charge, calling her “a very bright young lady”.
For now, Thandeka plans to remain in the navy, hoping to progress in rank and learn as much as she can. For other girls wanting to join the Navy, her advice is that it is their attitude that will determine how far they go, and that teamwork is of the utmost importance. If one goes down, all go down, she adds.
“As women, we are fortunate now that we can be whatever we want to, do whatever we want to, without any restrictions. It’s no longer a male-dominated world in the navy,” says Thandeka.
Built in Rio Santiago in 1958, the Libertad, which is Spanish for “freedom”, was incorporated into the Argentinian navy as a training frigate in 1963. The 3 765 ton ship measures almost 104 metres in length and 14.3m across the beam. Her 27 sails span 2 700m2 of sail surface and her main mast stands 52m tall.
“Since the Libertad’s maiden voyage in 1963, it has travelled over 800 000 nautical miles and visited 513 ports in 69 countries,” says Captain Díaz Durán. According to him, she established the world record for a trans-Atlantic crossing between Canada and Ireland by sailing 2 059 nautical miles in eight-and-a-half days.
The current commanding officer of the Libertad, Captain Juan José Iglesias, is a veteran of the Falklands War of 1982. He has 310 men and women under his command, including 26 officers, 90 midshipmen, 186 warrant and non-commissioned officers. During its visit to South Africa last year, he also had eight junior naval officers on-board from Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, India, New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru and, of course, South Africa.
