Flint School, Aboard Te Vega and teQuest, 1969-1981
- Flint School aboard Te Vega and teQuest
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Welcome Aboard!
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| Life aboard Flint School |
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Our courses ranged from biology and geometry to penmanship and spelling
to calculus and trigonometry to history and economics.
We'd get our news from the BBC news broadcasts every morning
(doesn't everybody?)
whether travelling in the Caribbean, Atlantic, Mediterranean or
the North Sea. Physics was available everywhere you looked, of
course—especially
in the engine room. Home Economics took place three times a day in the
galley, and Physical Education included water-skiing, swimming and
calisthenics—in some of the most beautiful ports on the planet.
Well, at least some of it was a lot like high school. With some subtle modifications...
The curriculum was based on performance, never on seniority; there were about a hundred students (65 boys, 35 girls—give or take) each year, with twenty college- and postgraduate-age staff members to keep things stirred up. Or in line. (Depends on who you ask...)
Students were allowed to take one duffel bag of clothes to last all school year (nine months, as you'd expect); and the duffel bag itself was imperative, since a suitcase would crowd you out of your bunk! Your private estate consisted of a single bunk (including a foam rubber mattress, under which you'd store your duffel) with a single shelf, and a single drawer—in the cabin you shared with up to seven other closet-mates.
Small cabins were favored—it may sound backwards, but think of it this way: would you rather have two disgruntled landlubbers cramping your space—or seven?
With such strict space allotments, there wasn't much flexibility on how much you could bring with you: quotas maxed out at six pairs of socks, six undies, six shirts, six slacks (skirts too, I suppose, for the other gender)—and you did your own laundry by hand, often in a bucket of seawater, using soap you'd bought ashore from your $35 account that had to last all year. (Don't fret—you could earn money aboard at $0.35 per hour... or for 'skilled labor', a whopping $0.45 per hour! Enterprising souls learned to buy ashore and hike the prices to sell aboard, anything from pencils to candy.)
Of course, laundry was not permissible at just any time, no siree. Laundry activities were tolerated only during your free time—which was 90 minutes a day, tops. And even then on only the five days out of six that your deck station was not on work crew. Except, of course, on a Big Deal (once every ten days), which eliminated free time for everyone. (I.e. everyone is on work crew, for Big Deal. No free time at all, for anyone.) Thus, with our ten-day week—more on this later—you'd have a free day 5/6 - 1/10 of the time, (got that?) or you can expect a free 90-minute afternoon less than 75% of the time. In port, that is. At sea, if you're not on watch, you're free—averaging a whopping 67% of the duration of the entire voyage, which is great for homework... if you're not 'feeding the fish', or sleeping, or 'feeding the fish', or eating, or 'feeding the fish', or bathing, or...
And to discourage wasting time and mom & dad's money, we were allowed to bring only six rolls of film at a time. The opportunities taken for photographic captures were thus more cautiously selected...
