The Isle of Man had a magnificent visitor in late April: Dar Młodzieży, Poland’s national sail training ship, called at Douglas for the weekend. I cannot claim credit for spotting her arrival. That goes to my girlfriend, who is Polish and grew up knowing the ship the way British children know the Cutty Sark, and who announced with some pride that a piece of her homeland was coming to ours. Her name translates as “Gift of Youth”, the ship’s that is, and she lives up to it, over a hundred metres of three-masted elegance crewed by cadets from Gdynia Maritime University, who live and study aboard as part of their maritime education.
Better still, she was open to visitors. Moored against the harbour wall, she welcomed the public aboard, and going up the gangway together was the highlight of the weekend, one of us seeing a legend of the Polish merchant fleet up close at last, the other simply gawping. However often you have seen a tall ship from the quayside, nothing prepares you for standing on her deck: the sheer scale of the rigging overhead, mile upon mile of rope, every line coiled and flaked with a precision that would shame most filing systems, and woodwork maintained to a standard that speaks of a crew who love her. As the owner of nineteen feet of sailing boat, I stood beneath those masts feeling roughly like a man who plays the recorder being shown around a cathedral organ. A full-rigged ship of that scale is a rare sight in Manx waters, and a reminder of the Island’s deep connections with the wider maritime world.
I came away with a souvenir I am unreasonably pleased with: a bag made from retired sails. Useful, storied, and faintly smug, which is exactly what a sailor’s luggage should be.
Charlton Krentz 