The Tall Ships Races are annual regattas held in various parts of Europe. This year, the sailing ships visited Aarhus, Helsinki, Riga and Szczecin. A total of 94 vessels took part in the gathering, including 22 sailing ships and 72 larger and smaller yachts. The idea behind Sail Training International is to popularize sailing among young people.
Several thousand young people came to Szczecin, under the care of liaison officers. Several months before the summer gathering, all the volunteers met on weekends to discuss and prepare an action plan. A total of 140 people from across Poland took part: young people, students, as well as people who already had jobs and their own businesses.
“We were not real officers,” says Mirek Małek. “We were volunteers. Nobody paid us for the time we devoted, or reimbursed our travel expenses. For several days we ran around in the heat, receiving meals in the cafeteria and tremendous satisfaction in return. We met amazing new people, and some of them changed their entire lives in the process,” Mirek recounts.
The liaison officer tried to make the crew feel at home. His duties included presenting the gathering’s schedule, organizing activities for the crews (sports competitions and city tours), informing captains about meetings, water deliveries and supplies, garbage collection and laundry, and telling them when and where crew events or parades were being held.
A captain playing the organ in a church
The most interesting part of the liaison officers’ work was fulfilling the captains’ special requests. Six years earlier, one foreign captain had had a birthday. In a conversation with his liaison officer, he said that he had always dreamed of playing the organ in a church. This year in Szczecin, the captain fulfilled his dream.
Another crew needed several hundred kilograms of ice for a party. The liaison officers fulfilled that wish as well.
“What did we do on Dar Młodzieży?” Mirek laughs. “Unlike our colleagues, we did not run around churches or cold-storage rooms. Dar Młodzieży needed detailed maps of Rügen, which we ordered from a nearby nautical shop. We had to take belt sanders in for repair. One of the officers needed epaulettes for a new uniform. Meanwhile, the commander (on training ships, the captain of the vessel is addressed as the school commander) needed to go to… the hairdresser. After several weeks of sailing, he needed to look presentable. The following day, President of the Republic of Poland Bronisław Komorowski was to visit Dar Młodzieży,” Mirek says, describing his duties.
Delivering the captain’s wife
Another task proved to be a real challenge. The day after the president’s visit, a captains’ dinner was to be held in a part of the city far from the port. The captains were taken there by special buses. At the same time, the wife of Dar Młodzieży’s commander was due to arrive. The task was to safely deliver his other half aboard while the commander was away.
“We were given a detailed description of the commander’s wife,” Mirek says. “She was supposed to be a petite blonde with short hair and a large orange bag. Apparently, there was only one such woman in Poland.”
The train carrying the commander’s wife was expected to be half an hour late. Two liaison officers, Mirek and Magda, set off early. Szczecin was gridlocked, while the Polish railways played a trick on them and the train arrived on schedule. There was confusion at the station, and the officers lost the captain’s invaluable “package.”
“Magda and I split up and started searching the entire station,” Mirek recounts. “After 15 minutes of running around, we found the captain’s wife. She was waiting in the street, at a bus stop. I recognized her in the crowd thanks to the orange bag. Magda looked after the commander’s wife, while I took care of the huge orange bag, which was heavy as hell.”
The bag turned out to be a portable library. The commander’s wife revealed that she loved reading and had packed it with books to last her for the next few weeks. Mirek reported to the commander that his wife had been delivered aboard and went to collect the longing husband. As a reward, the liaison officers were invited to the captains’ apartments—the famous stern of Dar Młodzieży, designed by Zygmunt Choreń in 1982. It was the fulfillment of Mirek’s dreams.
Crew parade and silent party at the castle
On a summer Sunday, a spectacular crew parade took place. All the crews from the 94 vessels marched through central Szczecin. The parade ended at the Summer Theatre, where awards were presented to individual vessels. In the evening, a disco for the crews was organized at the Pomeranian Dukes’ Castle. In both cases, the liaison officers handled the logistics.
The disco at the castle was an exceptional event. On one courtyard, tables stood beneath umbrellas, laden with prepared delicacies. The courtyard was crowded and noisy, with several hundred, perhaps even several thousand, people; languages from around the world could be heard, along with long queues for food and even longer ones for beer. Above their heads shone the stars of a hot August night.
A huge tent and a wooden dance floor stood in the second, larger courtyard, with a DJ on stage and typical disco music. More and more people arrived. Poles, Germans, Mexicans, Brazilians, English people and French people all enjoyed themselves. The whole world was dancing.
There was a silent party in one of the castle rooms. At the far end of the room was a raised platform with three DJs wearing headphones. The room was filled with dancing people, yet complete silence reigned there. Everyone danced with headphones on. The headphones had three channels, allowing people to switch freely whenever they wanted to change the rhythm.
Farewell
After the festivities came a return to everyday duties. The next day, the liaison officers escorted the crews to sports competitions and informed them about trips, the swimming pool and similar events. They collected the belt sanders from repair and finally established that epaulettes for the first officer could not be obtained in Szczecin in the following days. The quietest day of the gathering.
Tuesday marked the end. All the sailing ships and yachts set sail. Szczecin, which had throbbed with life like Rio de Janeiro during Carnival, with concerts held every evening and a parade from around the world passing through it, was suddenly to become deserted within a few hours.
As a reward for their work, the liaison officers—Mirek, Basia and Magda—sailed on Dar Młodzieży to Świnoujście. They stood on the sailing ship’s rail, waving to the crowd on the quay bidding farewell to the departing vessels.
“We were the happiest people on earth,” Mirek says. “We sailed on Dar Młodzieży, the ‘White Frigate,’ as our sailing ship is often called.
Dar Młodzieży was the last sailing ship to depart, and ahead of us we could see eight larger and smaller vessels, led by Kruzenshtern. The sailing ship passed General Zaruski, a schooner that had recently undergone a thorough renovation by the city of Gdańsk, halfway across the General Zaruski Lagoon.
As we entered the Piastowski Canal from the Szczecin Lagoon, the sky darkened, very heavy clouds arrived and a huge squall broke out. The wind blew so hard that it was impossible to catch one’s breath. Dar Młodzieży heeled several degrees to starboard, even though no sails had been set on the yards. It began to rain. The world disappeared behind a wall of cold rain; in the enormous storm, almost nothing could be seen.
The sailing ship was not moving straight ahead, but diagonally to the left. There were shoals on either side, and straight ahead was the canal entrance, with its breakwater arms bristling with rocks. The wind blew with terrible force from the side, pushing the ship toward the shoals. Dar Młodzieży’s engines were new, so they overcame the pressure of the wind.
The situation looked worse for Kruzenshtern. It was already in the canal, on calmer water, but was drifting heavily toward the shoals. It had to sail practically across the channel, which again posed a danger to Dar Młodzieży, which could not stop for fear of the shoals.
The entire watch gathered at Dar’s bow, watching the spectacle and happy that the wind had finally picked up. The squall appeared as quickly as it subsided. Dar Młodzieży and the other sailing ships reached Świnoujście safely.
“Those were beautiful days,” Mirek says. “Days during which I met many interesting and valuable people. Days during which I came to believe in myself 150 percent. After this gathering, I believed I could move mountains. I hope I will feel this way for a long time,” adds the volunteer and liaison officer on Dar Młodzieży, Mirek Małek.
(information: Mirek Małek/ii)