Q&A with Concordia from the week ending October 18, 1996
Why is the vessel named Concordia?...Christian Center School, Burlington, Massachusetts, USA
by Nick Hurzeler, 10/14/96
According to the Captain, the vessel is named Concordia for the same reason that the Concorde airplane has its name. It is because several countries joined together to build the first Concorde, just like several countries joined together to construct and crew the S/V Concordia. The Concordia was built in Poland in 1992. The Class Afloat program has students and teachers from Canada and the United States and the professional crew is Polish. In addition, the word Concordia means the same in English and French- a connection between ideas and places. Apparently, there is no connection with the other sail training vessel named Concordia that was retired ten years ago, based in New England.
If the Concordia started to sink, we would have to abandon ship.The abandon ship drill is usually practiced on Captain's Inspection days. First we hear the alarm: eight short beeps and one long beep repeated three times. The alarm is very loud and can be heard echoing throughout the entire ship. As soon as we recognize which alarm it is, we walk in an orderly fashion to our cabins to get our life jackets.
When we have reached our cabins, we make sure that our roommates haven't somehow managed to sleep through the alarm. We grab our lifejackets, but we don't put them on because they take up too much room in the crowded companionways. As soon as our feet touch the deck, we tie on our lifejackets.
Each watch is assigned to a certain life raft with a teacher and a professional crew member. One student is assigned the job of passing out immersion suits. The assigned professional crew member checks to make sure we're all there. At that point, if it were a actual emergency we would then get onboard the life rafts. However, when we are just practicing the abandon ship drill, the Captain or Ms. Woomer evaluate our drill and then we can return to what we were doing before the drill.
Ocean Challenge / e-mail: ocean@oceanchallenge.com / Class Afloat 1996-97
(c) 1996 Ocean Challenge, Inc.