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Hydrographic and Meteorology Aquatint course 20th July – 23rd July 2009

After lunch on Monday 20th July I made my way to Yatton train station to await my train to Plymouth. It wasn’t until my arrival at the Plymouth station after a gentle journey down that I realised I had been traveling with one of the two officers on the course for most of the journey. Then, once the two of us had met, the course officer Lt Cdr Peto-Clark and a Leading Hand from FOST HM, drove the last mile or so to HMS Drake. We took the first evening as an introduction both to the Naval barracks and to each other, then after dinner, some free time in the TV room and a short brief on the next day, we went to bed.

Bright and early the next morning after a ‘full English’ in the junior mess, the 4 cadets and 2 officers marched down to the Hydrological school for our first official day of the course. In the morning we were introduced to basic meteorology theory, what instruments are used for weather collecting at sea, how a weather balloon works which was followed by us actually being able to launch a balloon (unfortunately it was in heavy rain and although it did launch we received no information from it) and cloud recognition. The latter was my personal favourite as we ended the morning session with a test on clouds, which I scored the highest on. Then after lunch and a march back to the school, we were taken on a trip out into the Salient, past Drake’s island until we stopped in front of the water breaks to try out the instruments we had learnt about that morning, I found this both interesting and fun, although I was at the centre of a joke which involved me holding an instrument for too long. Then, once we returned, we finished the day in the TV room to watch a film before bed.

Wednesday morning, dressed in clean clothes after Tuesday’s uniform was left ‘slightly wet’ thanks to the rain and sea spray, we again marched down to the school for our days lessons. With the first day being meteorology the second, as you might guess was on hydrography (and oceanography). In the morning we went back out in the boat, past a number of HM warships and submarines into the salient, this time to study radar. Whilst we were on the boat we were shown how both radar and sonar work and how the Navy helps the Air Force with this. Then, before travelling back in for lunch we just had time to show our power boat skills as the ship’s captain let us take the helm for a few minutes each. Our last session in the school for the course was in the chart room to look over the 2 programmes the Navy input their radar data to. Although I didn’t find this as interesting as the meteorology it was very impressive. Finally, when the sun was out we played a game whilst being introduced to GPS; this was also very impressive because of the accuracy with which it showed where we had been!

After a quiet last evening in the TV room and a good night’s sleep we woke up early for breakfast before packing our bags and all making our separate ways home. Luckily 2 of the cadets went on the same train whilst the other lived in Plymouth and I travelled back to Bristol with the sub-lieutenant.

Although this was only a short course, I believe I took a lot out of it both on the Navy way of life and on the subjects we studied, as well as some new friends!

James Richards

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