By Greg Nikkel
When Weyburn Comp student and SRC member Zoe Molder was told of a chance for a leadership adventure on a tall ship, she jumped at the opportunity to be one of 14 high school students chosen from across Canada.
The Oriole Youth Adventure Challenge, aboard the 100-foot HMCS Oriole based out of Victoria, B.C., was offered to students in leadership positions through the Canadian Student Leadership Association in partnership with the Royal Canadian Navy.
Zoe took part in a five-day leadership program this past spring, and is now preparing to enter her Grade 12 year as the treasurer and public relations chair of the SRC at the Weyburn Comp.
“I really wanted to experience something that would give me a different adventure and meet new people. Being a girl from Saskatchewan, you don’t get the chance to sail on a tall ship very often,” said Zoe, adding she had never been to Victoria and wanted to see the West Coast city.
Staff advisor Joanne Jensen brought the details of this adventure, and told the SRC members that no one from the Comp had ever gone on this program before. Zoe had to go through the application process which included a letter explaining why she wanted to take the program.
Once she arrived in Victoria and was introduced to her fellow students, along with members of the Canadian Navy who crewed the Oriole, and the ship set off, with the students learning as they went about how to sail a two-masted tall ship.
“The original plan was to sail around the Gulf Islands, but we had such incredibly perfect weather, so we sailed through the Georgia Strait between Vancouver Island and the mainland,” explained Zoe, noting their ship docked at Gibsons and Ganges, as well as stopping at the Montague Island Harbour on Galiano Island, and they visited an uninhabited island, Jedediah Island, and hiked around it. They also docked at Nanaimo, but didn’t spend any time seeing that city.
Among the sailing skills they learned was how to work as a group to hoist and raise the sails, and later to take them down and tie them off with the correct knots, as well as to read the ship’s charts and monitoring equipment.
“This was not a one-person job. You need to work together to hoist the sails. We were trained like part of the crew,” said Zoe, adding they were also trained in how to tack a ship when the winds weren’t blowing in the right direction for where they wanted to go. For the bigger sails, they had to sit on the deck butt-to-butt, each pulling on ropes while other crew members worked above with getting a sail in place.
The youths also had to take turns standing watch at night, whether they were docked in a harbour or were at anchor elsewhere. One of Zoe’s shifts was from 1 to 5 a.m., and when they were anchored in a harbour around other craft, she had to make sure their ship didn’t drift outside of a prescribed area.
“We also got trained to drive the boat, which was kind of cool. Each shift was a half-hour. It was really cool to drive the boat,” said Zoe, noting there was a small motor on the Oriole to help it manoeuvre when docking in a harbour or around other boats, plus for coming out of the harbour when the boat sets sail.
Some of the lessons in leadership came from the Navy crew members, as they need to work as a team unit, and the lessons they spoke of can be used in the SRC setting.
“A huge part of being in the Navy is organization. If you don’t have a plan, it’s not going to work out. To be part of the Navy they have to be organized and know what they’re doing,” she said.
“I learned more about myself. I didn’t know if I could do this, going out there by myself and going on this adventure. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but I realized I could do more of these things, and I got more confidence in myself by doing this,” said Zoe, adding a bonus is the lessons about sailing is a set of skills that will be with her for the rest of her life.
The crew saw a whale at a distance, as they came across a gathering of small boats and they could see the fins of a whale. Zoe couldn’t tell what kind it was, other than it wasn’t a humpback whale, which she is familiar with.
She explained that her family owns a house in Hawaii where her family enjoys scuba-diving, and she has seen many humpback whales there.
Around some of the islands as they sailed through the Georgia Strait, they also saw a lot of seals.
Of the 14 youth, four were from Saskatchewan, with the other students from Regina, Meadow Lake and Maple Creek, in addition to students from B.C., Alberta, Quebec, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
Zoe said while they started out as strangers, they became very close by the end of the adventure, which was helped by the fact the other students are all leadership-minded like she is. “I realized all these kids were a lot like me. We care about academics, and we are all active in our schools. We became more like a family than just friends, and not only them but the six Navy crew members,” said Zoe, noting they keep in regular touch with their own Facebook page.
As an SRC member, she and three other girls from the student council will be heading to the national student leadership conference which will be held in New Brunswick, and it happens one of her shipmates will be there, as her mom is helping to organize the conference.
