Hello and Welcome

I'll start by telling you a little bit about myself and what I'm doing.

I'm currently a final year music student at a music college in London. I've been playing the double bass for around 15 years. About a year or so ago I made the decision that life as a professional musician is not for me. While I still really love playing music, especially orchestral and chamber music, the sacrifices that have to be made are a bit too much for me. All my life I've been told that music is a career for those who are so passionately driven that they couldn't even possibly contemplate doing anything else. I used to think that that was me, but I eventually realised that I can do other things and that not doing music isn't a failure. The impression that those who don't do music, or teach instead of playing in an orchestra, are failures of some kind is a big problem in the music industry; it took me a long time to get over that. If enough people are interested I'll do another post on my thoughts on music as a career in general, the ups and downs, and the reasons people do or don't do it.

So what am I going to do instead? Well you might have guessed from my pseudonym that I'm joining the Merchant Navy. I haven't officially started yet, but come September I will be a Deck Officer Cadet. For those of you who don't know what the Merchant Navy is, then remove all thoughts of the Royal Navy from your head, and instead think: shipping. The Merchant Navy is the collective term for British merchant vessels. This basically means any commercial ship such as: container ships, oil/chemical/gas tankers, ferries, cruise ships, offshore oil rig support vessels, tugs, sightseeing boats, arctic research ships, and many more types of ship, too numerous to name here.

I discovered the Merchant Navy through sailing. I started sailing at university, and found myself really loving it. I did a lot of Team Racing with the university club and some teaching at another sailing club to earn a bit of spending money. I really enjoy the Seamanship aspects of sailing. Seamanship can be briefly described as the attitude that sailors have. It's the ability to do something safely, quickly and calmly, no matter what the conditions. It's being able to use the right tool at the right time such as which knot to tie, or not relying on a GPS for navigation. I spent quite a lot of time looking at tall ships, good looking sailing yachts and the like online when I discovered a link to the Merchant Navy Training Board website. After reading that it wasn't too late to start a career at sea I instantly started looking at applying. I knew immediately that I wanted to be a Deck Officer as, while I do find engines interesting, I particularly enjoy the Seamanship aspects of sailing, and so there was only one choice. I'll talk about the application process in more detail in another post (I meant to keep this one short but that's not going so well...) but after many applications, lots of waiting, and a very exciting letter, I have a place!

For the next 3 years I will be studying to obtain my Certificate of Competency: Deck Officer Of the Watch Unlimited. This studying will be taking place both on land and at sea. There are 5 phases, 3 land and 2 sea, in a sandwich arrangement. The land phases will be spent studying at Warsash Maritime Academy, while the sea phases will be spent onboard the ships of A.P. Moller & Maersk, or just Maersk for short. I'll explain more about the training in another post, and you'll be hearing my first hand experiences on here as I go. When I qualify I will be an Officer Of the Watch and will basically be driving those huge, massive ships you see out at sea! It's really a very exciting prospect and I can't wait to start. September just can't come quickly enough.

I'll leave you with an explanation of the name of the blog. One of my favourite nautical pieces is a piece called Four Sea Interludes by Benjamin Britten. It's a suite of interludes from his opera Peter Grimes. Since my blog posts will be like interludes from my training I thought the name appropriately nautical and musical to reflect my interests. Oh and hopefully I will be going to sea more than four times...