Adventure on Ripapa Island

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34044, 7 January 1976, Page 12

Adventure on Ripapa Island

Gone are the days when a boy could find adventure by running away to sea—but many do the next best thing each year on Ripapa Island in Lyttelton Harbour.

The tiny fortified island provides a genuine nautical atmosphere for the 84 boys attending the 1976 national sea cadet camp at Training Ship Fort Jervois. “When they sleep in hammocks and hear the waves crashing on the rocks, the boys think they really have gone to sea,” a camp instructor said yesterday. Sea cadets from throughout the South Island and Wellington are attending the 10-day camp, which will finish on Sunday. They are supervised by a staff of 10 camp officers and qualified instructors from the Royal New Zealand Navy, under

Lieutenant-Commander W. Costello. The cadets showed what they have learned for a visiting official party yesterday, including representatives of the Army, Royal New Zealand Air Force, the police, the Canterbury branch of the Navy League, and the Christchurch City Council. Two of the visitors mustered the courage to take a trip on the “jack stay” — a flying fox-type arrangement of ropes between Ripapa Island and the mainland — but the rest was left to the boys. The 84 cadets, aged between 14 and 17, are divided into four watches for daily theoretical and practical instruction in seamanship. While one watch is out sailing on the harbour, the others sit in classes, play sport, or scramble round a specially constructed “confidence course” under the watchful eye of a Navy physical training instructor. On a typical day, the boys are roused from their hammocks at 6 a.m. A quiek shower is followed by half an hour of physical training and half an hour of “cleaning ship.”

The main part of the day is taken up by training activities, and after another spell of “cleaning ship” the cadets are in their hammocks by 9 p.m.

“Some of them are a little homesick at first, but we keep them too busy to stay that way,” said a camp officer. “A few of the boys also find the discipline hard at first, but thev soon fall into line.” Why do they enjoy the camp? “It is just living" on an island, sleeping in hammocks —all the fun we have,” one cadet said. The annual training camps

are the highlight of the year for the sea cadets, who came under the wing of the Canterbury branch of the Navy League in 1958.

Providing “adventure on the cheap” is the aim of the camp organisers. It costs members of a sea cadet unit only $1 for 10 days at Fort

Jervois — and there is no shortage of boys or instructors willing to join, according to Mr R. A. Alexander, of

i the Canterbury branch of the i Navy League. ; “The course is of tremen- : dous benefit, and has plenty : of support,” he said.