Station 7 East London exercise

As part of our training, all recruits are taught how to execute a pin drop and are told to use it whenever entering the water from a jetty or boat. The value of this was recently pushed home when we took the trainees to the Ocean Africa Frontier in the East London Harbor and had them climb up a rope ladder and then jump off, a drop of 8 meters. Amy-Louise had this to say about the experience:It was not something I would usually do, but when you know that you have been trained and you are wearing a wet-suit, a life jacket and a helmet, you know you can do it. Climbing up was no problem, but when you got to the top and looked down; immediately you think: 'Do I really have to jump off here? Its so high.' Fortunately for me, we had some qualified crew that went first and after seeing that it can be done, I took a step of faith. When we climbed back up for our second dismount, the Asian crew members made us pose for so many photos. I'm glad we could learn how to do new things and make the day interesting for the crew of Ocean Africa. They definitely had a good laugh!I really enjoyed doing this exercise. I tried to visualize how it would be to climb up and jump off in rough seas.