On Saturday August 24th this year’s ever popular Cadet Adventure Day took place on land and sea from the northern end of Rough Firth upstream from the SYC pier to as far out as White Horse Bay. The “Adventure”, as in previous years, was masterminded, organised and run by Willie Patterson who, as always, had thought up an ingenious and cunning plot around which the event took place.
The adventure was based around a fictitious story entitled “Crystals of Rathan”. Rathan is an alternative name which has been used in the past for the isle of Hestan. The “crystals” were thought to have originated in the fourteenth century Heston manor house of John Balliol. They were passed on to subsequent owners of the island and later donated to the SYC for safekeeping in the early twentieth century. They had recently been stolen from the club by Rank Bajin, a local criminal, who had then demanded a ransom for their return. The SYC’s response was to recruit five “special agents” to hunt him down, recover the crystals, then disperse themselves to five separate sites around Rough Firth. The cadets task of the day was to contact the agents, each of whose location was given to them by map reference, exchange passwords, following which they would be given one of the crystals for safe return to the clubhouse.
Twenty seven cadets aged eight to eighteen took part in five separate teams. Each team travelled at high speed between the individual agents locations in RIBs captained by a senior club member. The map references showed the agents were to be found up river from the yacht club’s pier, Kippford merse, Horse Isles Bay, Whiteport Bay and on the Mission Control ship “Alicat”, located at sea just south of Rough Island. Travel between Horse Isles Bay and Whiteport Bay involved walking overland through the area in which Rank Bajin had last been seen. As the cadets were liable to attack from him by water pistol they themselves were suitably equipped to respond if necessary. Within two hours all teams had successfully retrieved the crystals and returned them to Mission Control on Alicat. Thereafter much fun was had by the cadets many of whom who dived into the water from their RIBs or off the top of Alicat.
Overall a great Adventure Day was had and thoroughly enjoyed by all who took part including much useful training in land and sea based seamanship skills. Further such training “adventures” are much anticipated in times to come.
Report by Robert Dinwiddie Photos by John Sproat