 |
A few minutes later he unwinds
another length of line from around a belaying
|
“The thing the Trust pushes,” Letch said,
“is that everybody will be allowed to experience the whole ship – from helming, to pulling on the halyards, to serving the lunch, to cleaning up the tables.”
“’Is the adventure of a life-time… To me it is actually a microcosm of life,” he said. “The challenge is to see how far (the handicapped) can stretch themselves.”
Captain Morin Scott: "Its safer
on board than on shore"
“Going aloft and working
in the rigging, strung out like birds on a telephone wire… able-bodied
and disabled are totally equal,” an able-bodied woman crewmember said.
“You look out for each
other,” she continued, explaining that each of the
20 handicapped crewmembers aboard has an able-bodied ‘buddy’ to assist them.
Besides these 40 crew, there are eight able-bodied professional crew on board.
“We work the pace of each job at the speed of the slowest member, so that nobody ever feels out of place, and everybody is actually pulling their weight," said captain Hugh Munroe, one of several skippers the Lord Nelson has.
The STS Lord Nelson under full sail
Although the Jubilee Sailing
Trust has carried more than 5,000 handicapped people to sea since 1986,
it has only taken nine disabled people aboard from Cyprus since Scott opened
the chapter on the island in 1997.
But this is not for lack of
interest, said John Burlinson, treasurer for the Trust’s Cyprus branch:
“The greatest problem we have in Cyprus is finding the handicapped people”
to take to sea. This, he added, is harder even than finding the money to
operate the ship
.
Neophytou said this may owe in large part of the fact that “in Cyprus a lot of disabled people are embarrassed to be seen. And one can understand that.”
“Me, I’m an outgoing type, and I don’t mind being seen,” he said. “But a lot of people in wheelchairs – they are embarrassed to go outside. They stay mainly at home.”
“One of the biggest reasons is there aren’t facilities to warrant them going out (such as) toilets,” he said. “In a restaurant you can’t find a bathroom. Here the toilets are upstairs or downstairs.”
He also blames the narrow pavements. “There’s either a flower in the middle of them or a tree or a car parked on the pavement. This makes it difficult” to get around, he said.
Just as a good yarn is worth repeating, so also with the Lord Nelson: she will soon have a sister ship, also purpose-built to carry the handicapped to sea.
The Trust is now finishing raising the £14 million Sterling needed to complete her, hopefully in the year 2000. Unlike the Lord Nelson, this ship will have a wooden hull. And unlike the Lord Nelson, she is being built by many of the same handicapped people who will one day crew her.