20 polytechnic students to sail on world's fastest tall ship

Source: Channel News Asia

SINGAPORE: Some students from Singapore Polytechnic will be making a five-day voyage to Vietnam on a Russian tall ship on Saturday.

The challenge for them is to learn how to sail a ship without an engine.

This is the first activity that stems from a maritime education agreement which the school has signed with a Russian University on Friday.

20 students from Singapore Polytechnic will join some young Russian sailors on the world's fastest tall ship, the SS Pallada.

With 26 sails and masts soaring some 50 metres (162 feet) above the deck, this training vessel has made over 80 voyages covering more than 320,000 kilometres (200,000 miles) across the world's oceans.

The Pallada has been the undisputed winner of the annual Tall Ship Regatta in Japan for the last ten years, and it even has a placing in the Guinness Book of Records for the highest speed recorded by a tall ship.

Singapore Polytechnic's Singapore Maritime Academy and the Far Eastern State Technical Fisheries University of Vladivostok in Russia have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to exchange expertise in maritime education and develop research programmes and projects.

Georgy Nikolayevich Kim, President, Far East State Technical Fisheries, said: "Our countries are the members of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation. And the decision was to hold the next meeting of APEC in our city Vladivostok in 2012. So, our President Putin aimed to make Vladivostok similar to Singapore."

Thanks to this collaboration, the Singapore students will have the rare privilege of sailing on a traditional ship with no engine.

Roland Tan, Director, Singapore Maritime Academy, said: "It's going back to the basics – understanding wind direction, understanding how the ship behaves. I think it will be an experience the students will find very invaluable in terms of navigation and in terms of how they sail a ship."

David Phipps, Year 1 student, Singapore Polytechnic, said: "Sailing with sails is going back to the days of old. It's quite a good learning experience, and it's indeed an eye-opener."

The budding sailors are also looking forward to working with maritime students of other nationalities.