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The Goderich Signal-Star, 1986-08-27, Page 19Communit ®Entertainment *Features *Religion.*Family ®More Sailing adventure leaves youth with vivid memories mice BY LIZ WILKINS Matthew Ciabaglia of Kincardine said he loved his trip on board the sailing ship Playfair last. year. "It was excellent, he said. "And it was worth it." The two Brigantine ships, Playfair and Pathfinder, were in Goderich harbour last Wednesday to start off a nine -day voyage to Port Dover. Each ship sailed off with almost 30 people on board. Over half of them were crew members picked up in Goderich. The crew will belearning how to handle sails and steer a ship along with many important life skills. Ciabaglia's trip started near Midland. He sailed through all the Great Lakes ex- cept Lake Superior. It was his first time on board a sailing ship. "We switched around in different stations and learned how to run dr whole thing." The sail training trips begin in mid-June and end around mid-September. Ciabaglia sailed during the last two weeks of August. "Sometimes it.was stormy," he said. "The ship would be flying around everywhere and you'd be hanging on by a wire. Often when you were on the ship you wished you were off but looking back now I see the trip was excellent." Ciabaglia was a crew member, Everyone starting the program begins as a crew member and in subsequent years can move up to petty officer, watch officer, ex- ecutive officer and eventually captain. One important skill Ciabaglia learned was getting along with other people. "There were rich people and under- privileged all living on the same boat,"he said. Many things'were hard to get used to such as only bathing twice in two weeks. "At the start we went six days without stopping: You got off and you're still sway- ing from the movement of the boat. A lot of people got seasick.". ' Jim Barry,• training officer on the Pathfinder this year, said that the crew members who want to go on the trips must be at least 14 years old and in good physical condition. "The boyswill have to trade places a lot because there are only 14 bunks and 18 seamen,` Barry said. One watch ( six people) is on duty all the time so the others get the bunks until their turn comes to- go on.watch..,. - , .. •,. ,_ Ciabaglia said he liked the 12 o'clock watch and the 4 o'clock in the morning watch. The third watch was at 8 o'clock: The worst thing that happened on Ciabaglia's trip occurred when the boat was docked and the sewage tank exploded while one of the crew was attempting to 'glean it out. Ciabaglia paid $400 for his two-week trip. Barry said the cost this year ranges from $324 to $520 depending on the length of the trip. There are trips for girls and for boys. Barry said some girls such as Heather St. Louis enjoy sailing a lot. Heather is one of the watch officers on board the Pathfinder By Susan Hundentmark ' A. violent society produced the mass murderer (Climbing the rigging this year. Sean O'Donaghue, another watch officer on the. Pathfinder, said he became in- terested in sailing when he and his mother were walking through the park and he saw his friend on one of the boats. He asked his Heather, St. Louis demonsrates to new crew members hbw to climb up the rigging on the Pathfinder in Goderich harbour. The tall ship along with the Playfair set sail from Goderich last Wednesday.(photo by Liz Wilkins) friend what he was doing and discovered he was working on the boat. "Right then, I knew I wanted to sail," O'Donaghue said. Ciabaglia said he would love to go again but "you have to go through a training course during the winter on weekends in .,Toronto and that's not too convenient for me right now." But he said he enjoyed the trip a lot. "It was excellent. Last week I phoned a friend from the trip. He sent me pictures of the trip." "Everyone acts like pirates" Goderich native, Pat O'Brien cruises high seas as captain of large yacht BY PAUL HARTMAN One might hesitate to draw a comparison between Pat O'Brien and Long John Silver and rightly so. But the two have one thing in common —they're both captains of their ships. O'Brien, a 34 -year-old. Goderich native, is the skipper of an 83 -foot yacht that cruises the Carribean in the winter and the Mediter- ranean in the summer. In person, the youthful O'Brian bears no resemblance whatsoever to the legendary buccaneer —except perhaps that he enjoys visiting the port of Corsica where, as he puts it, "everyone acts like pirates." O'Brien, who has spent most of his last 15 years on the water, captains the craft for a Warner Brothers executive. The vessel is in turn, loaned out to friends for their holidays, and these are the folk that O'Brien and his 'crew entertain. Now and then, a celebrity will come abdard, admits O'Brien, but on. the ocean everyone is on the same level. For example, he cites the time when he and the rest of his crew played monopoly with Ali McGraw's son while mom did the dishes. The yacht that O'Brien is captain of, is relatively small in comparison to others in the same class. Some, most notably that owned by an Arab Sheik, approach 300 feet in length and employ a crew of up to 40 peo- ple. The Sheik in question fell upon hard times. last year,' explains O'Brien, and had to cut his operating budget for the vessel to $11 million. In contrast, the boat that O'Brien works on carries a modest crew of four —the cap- tain, deck hand, stewardess and chef. The chefs on crafts such as these are often quite• well°known for their culinary skills. Their reputation often provides them with the ex- cuse:to do nothing but cook for a living. The chef that O'Brien works with —fortunately for the rest of the crew— would "rather be on' Splices rope Goderich native Pat O'Brien, left, and another crew member splice a rope �n board the 83 foot yacht that O'Brien captains. The yacht, owned by a Warner Brothers executive,'ean carry four crew members and up to six passengers. deck sanding than below decks, cooking." All the crew members on O'Brien's vessels help sail the ship. ,O'Brien discovered the hidustry that now earns him his living while on a sojurn through Europe on his motorcycle, during the early 70s. His electrical engineering background got him a job refitting vessels and he gradually worked his way up through the ranks. He became deck -hand on a yacht, then mate, then mate engineer and finally, after receiving a tip from a friend, captain. He's had quite a bit of experience crewing on various vessels, including some large racing yachts. "Now those are something," O'Brien says. "There's always so touch hap- pening, and you have to be on your toes all the time." While crewing onthe grand prix yacht racing circuit, he often worked side-by-side with members of America Cup teams. Working on a private yacht is somewhat more low-key than on a racing craft and less formal than crewing a larger yacht but it is nonetheless hard work. "People often kid me that my job is a year-round vacation and it is sometimes dif- ficult to convince people that I work," O'Brien says. "But we're constantly san- ding and refinishing the deck, doing paper- work, fixing equipment and taking care of up to six passengers." Often the "night, owls" will go to bed at 2 a.m. and the crew will stay up with them. The early risers will get up at 6 a.m. and the crew will have to rise with them. It's a lot like running a small hotel, says O'Brien. Crew members usually get one weekend off per season. Things are a tot easier when there are no passengers to take care of. The crew then gets a chance to relax somewhat, although they still have to take care of maintenance and daily chores. A bond develops between crew members that work together for ex- tended periods of time and mast of the peo- ple in the industry know each other. "We'll often chat with other boats in the vicinity, and tell them how many fish we've caught, even though we 1iaven't caught anything," jokes O'Brien. "I've dragged a fishing line for 20,000 miles and never had a nibble." For .the past several weeks, O'Brien has been home in Goderich on vacation and he spoke to the local Rotary Club about his .experiences. He plans on settling down soon in New England and crewing on yachts that stay a little closer to home. Why? That's the first disbelieving response most of us likely had to the shocking and incomprehensible violence of the massacre of 14 people last week in an Ed- mond, Oklahoma post office. When a 44 -year-old ex -marine explod- ed into a frenzy of killing the day after he was threatened with dismissal from his job as a letter carrier, pulled three pistols from his gun collection out of his mailbag and shot dead 14 fellow workers before killing himself, we were stunned and saddened and baffled. We were at a loss to understand why he did it. When our self-defence mechanism of hurnor kicked in, we probably joked that maybe the man over -reacted a bit, that it's no wonder postal service is so bad or that we'll never take the risk of com- plaining about the mail again.. And, we probably finally dismissed the man as crazy and forgot all about the tragic inci- dent after reassuring ourselves that it was isolated and unexplainable. Because Sherrill was quickly dubbed "Crazy Pat" by his neighbors and the media, it seems that readers were discouraged from looking any farther than insanity for explanations. But, I'm probably not the only one to think it was not that simple. An ex -marine, Sherrill was described as an excellent marksman whose main interest in life was his gun collection. And, although the .Pentagon said it had no such record, his co-workers said Sher- rill often spoke of serving with the ,marines in Vietnam in the 1960s. He was also a small arms instructor for the Oklahoma Air National Guard. . Couple this background with a North American society where violence is often viewed both personally and nationally as a reasonable answer to lr ablems and as the ultimate way to prove one's manhood and I think you'll 2Frive a lot closer to the reasons behind the massacre. Though it's debatable whether or not Sherrill participated in the Vietnam war, his actions' and behavior seem consistent with those of veterans from that war. Myra MacPherson's book "Long Time Passing" which explores the American generation which lived through the Viet- ' nam war era, makes an indepth analysis of what happened to the men who fought in the jungles of Vietnam and returned home to a country which disapproved of the war and often blamed them, instead of the government for the United States' involvement. Because of their unpopularity, Viet- nam veterans often denied they'd taken part in the war and therefore, did nothing to work at resolving their feelings about their involvement. But, a near -lethal anger that they had sacrificed for nothing, that they were scorned by the community and that they had been used by their country .was often boiling underneath many veterans' calm exteriors. "I am so afraid to let go because I think I would go completely out of control," ex- plained one veteran. "If some guy cut you off the road, you might give"him the finger, honk the horn, or shout through the window. I would chase him, force him off the road, drag him out of the car and beat him to a pulp. I did it once and believe me, it scares me to live with that kind of rage," he said. Other veterans explained that Vietnam was the place they learned how powerful they could feel when they killed and destroyed. The military rewarded them with promotions, medals and prestige when they were violent but failed to help them readjust when they returned home to North American society where violence is not accepted. "We were instilled with the knowledge to kill — instantly and reflexively, that it's right — and put in an environment and told, 'Okay, do it.' Then, snap, you're home. Literally shooting someone's head full of holes and in hours you're walking the streets of San Francisco," said another veteran. That's not to say all or even any veterans returned home to become mass murderers. But, all of them went through their own private agonies to try and cope with their brutal experiences. Some chose not to cope with alcohol, drugs, isolation from others and even suicide. And, I think, it's easy to see that a marine who had been trained to literally blast his obstacles out of the way for his own survival, could, when pushed to his limits, mistake an Oklahoma post office for the jungles of Vietnam and gun down his co-workers like they were Viet- namese villagers in My Lai. Now that militarism is "fashionable" again in the United States, violence is more and more often the theme of movies with one Rambo -like "hero" mowing down anything that moves with a submachine gun. It seems to me that Sherrill is more than one isolated and insane mass murderer. He's a product of a society that nurtures, demands, respects and even reveres violence.