All aboard for my next adventure traveling up the coast of Norway following the Tall Ships Race!

I am hoping to travel on Lord Nelson with my favourite charity The Jubilee Sailing Trust however they are currently facing ‘stormy weather’ and have issued a disturbing weather forecast!

‘Nellie’, as she is affectionately known, is one of two ships specially designed and modified to enable people of all abilities to experience sailing the high seas in a Tall ship.

The sea does not discriminate!

Last summer I experienced a week as Volunteer Crew on ‘Tenacious’ sailing from Portland to Portsmouth on the JST’s first creative voyage ‘Songs of the Sea’ and the experience changed my life. Sarah Outen MBE is a patron of JST and she has a personal mantra that helped her solo rowing adventures: “learn your personal ABC and you can achieve anything”.

ABC = Attitude – Belief – Courage.

Since sailing with Sir Richard Stilgoe’s Orpheus Trust on Tenacious I have gone on to use this ABC as my personal mantra, to build resilience, revise my understanding of disability and reflect on the importance of inclusivity.  On that voyage, I realised I had so much to learn from the mixed ability volunteer crew in terms of resilience, tenacity and the power of positive thinking. As a result of this, I have since worked with PMLD groups in Dundee as a storyteller and collaborative artist and set up a crowd-funding scheme to go one step further.

Jan on board Tall Ship Tenacious

From the infamous Shetland Bus to Bamsa the music-loving St Bernard, from Celtic queens to Norse goddesses, from balding Pirates to Sinclair’s Scottish invasion there are plenty of stories to share! All my stories are told eye to eye mind to mind and heart to heart and through visiting Tall Ships and learning their history I have found many a fine story.

Through your sponsorship and my Just Giving campaign, I can now offer storytelling events for free to nautical charities and coastal communities. My quest to ‘Tell Tales on Ten Tall Ships’ has led me to devise and deliver two new storytelling events ‘Tenacious Tales on Tall Ships’ and ‘Worse Things Happen at Sea’. I recently performed at The Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh and on HMS Unicorn in Dundee and The Tall Ship Glenlee in Glasgow as well as in sunny Scarborough.

Travelling hopefully!

My adventure starts in the Maritime museums in Oslo then to Lillesand to stay with storyteller Hilde Eskild. We collaborated in 2018 on ‘THRAWN!’ for TradFest when we got my local songbirds Newhaven Community Choir together with their Norwegian male voice choir Herrett Kompanie Trass for songs and stories at Leith Dockers Club. I will also visit Mandal to learn more about the famous Salvesen family who employed Leith men in the Salvesen Whaling Company. Hopefully, my adventures with JST will continue on Nellie as I planned to sail from Fredrikstad to Bergen with JST and you can follow my progress on Facebook and Twitter!