Swedish tall ship and sail training vessel “Gunilla”.
MARIGOT--The 60-metre (180 feet)-long three-masted barquentine sail training vessel (STV) “Gunilla”, soon to dock in St. Martin at the Galisbay Pier, Marigot, will hold a ship’s “open day” on Saturday, March 16, non-profit association Caribbean Sail Training (CST) announced.
The public will have free access to the ship from 10:00am to 4:00pm on Saturday. As with all CST member vessels, she will be hosted by the Galisbay/Port of Marigot. “Gunilla” is currently sailing from Suriname to Guadeloupe and to St. Martin after that.
The Swedish vessel was launched in 1940 as a long-haul cargo ship. With the exception of a short time in the ’50s, when the ship acted as a ferryboat, transporting both people and cars to Öland, she sailed with cargo until the ’90s.
“Gunilla” was completely rebuilt in 1997 and started working as a sail training ship. She has a total sail area of 1,000 square metres and carries a professional crew of 11 and 44 trainees/students. The students work in three different watches on board and take care of all the duties there are on a ship of this size, such as maintenance, climbing the rigging, handling the sails and working on deck.
Life onboard “Gunilla” offers a unique combination of theory and practice for the trainees/students who are from the Öckerö Seglande Gymnasieskola, an upper secondary school for students ages 16-19 and a municipal school, financed by the Swedish state.
The school is located in the archipelago of Gothenburg, on the west coast of Sweden. It has four different programmes, all of which are three years long. Two of the programmes aim at further studies at a university and the other two aim to prepare pupils for work on different sea vessels.
Apart from the ordinary schoolwork at the school in Sweden, three of the programmes spend as much as a total of six months on the school ship “Gunilla”. Students in the fourth programme do their training in the Swedish merchant fleet.
“Gunilla” sails all year long, taking students from different programmes on five separate trips each school year. Three trips are sailed by the students on the social science programme and the other two by students on the science programme together with students from the vocational programme.
The first grade students on the social studies programme sail from Spain to the USA making stops in the Canary Islands, Cape Verde, Bahamas, Grenada, Antigua, St. Martin and Suriname. In their second year they sail from Öckerö, Sweden, to Cádiz, Spain, via Germany, France, England and Portugal. In their third year the journey begins and ends in the USA with stops in Cuba, Belize, Mexico and New Orleans.
The first trip for the students on the science and vocational programme is sailed in the Mediterranean and takes them from Cádiz to Gibraltar, Barcelona (Spain), Corsica, Sardinia and signing off in Malaga. In their second year they sail from Miami to Öckerö (Sweden), stopping at Charleston, Bermuda, the Azores and Portsmouth, England.
Some changes in the regular itineraries have been applied this season. “Gunilla’s” visit and open ship day has been scheduled on the same day as the “open door” of the Port de Marigot. A private reception for the port authorities, government officials, press, VIPs, invited guests and Caribbean Sail Training’s members is scheduled at 5:00pm after the ship’s open-door event.
