Stormy Night at Sea

Ellyn Byrns was 16 years old when she embarked on the journey of a lifetime with a program called Class Afloat. It offered a highschool and university curriculum on board a Norwegian tall ship. 

After nine months, Byrns' adventure was extended into the summer when she was invited to come back and work on the ship. Her job was to teach people who had enrolled to come on board and learn more about sailing. 

It was on that ship that summer where she experienced a dark and stormy night she'll never forget.

They were sailing the North Sea on a 210 foot steel, 900 tonne ship. The sea was very deep, with extremely large waves. One night it was pitch black. It was 1:30 in the morning and Byrns' watch was told to take in some of the sails on the mast. 

The sea was starting to create 30 - 40 foot swells on either side.  

"If you can imagine staring at the horizon," Bryns described. "The ship is pitching up to 60 sixty degrees on either side. It's rocking back and forth from side to side."

"The moon was shining but it was obscured by these dark and roiling clouds on the horizon and we were sailing into it."

They had no choice.

"I remember standing on the deck and the salt water is washing over the deck," she remembered. "It's drenching our boots and our hands are cold and my poor Norwegian trainees just want to go back to their bunks but we can't."

The ship's captain told them to go aloft and take in the t'gallant. It's the second highest sail you can climb to. 

Byrns and her trainees grabbed their harnesses and prepared to climb up. The problem was, Byrns was the only experienced sailor, with three Norwegian trainees under her watch. 

"One of the girls was too sick. It would have been a horrible situation so I told her to stay on deck," said Byrns.

"I'll never forget the look on the faces of the other two," she added.

Byrns ended up attempting to do the job of what would normally take five experienced sailors to complete -- pulling up the second largest sail on the ship.

"So I laid out to the end of the yard and clipped in and I was getting tossed and turned on this 90 foot mast on the North Sea, hauling up this canvas with all of my might," she explained. "My feet are slipping off of this soaked footrope and my fingers are clenching onto the steel."

It took Byrns about an hour and a half, working slowly from one end to the other, hauling up the canvas and then tying it up onto the steel, then sliding down another couple feet.

Eventually she had it all up. She noticed there were blood stains on the canvas.

"My hands had been so cold and I had been so focussed on what I was doing that I hadn't noticed that I had ripped open several of my blisters," said Byrns. "My own blood sweat and tears were put into the task at hand."

"I was cold and I was exhausted but I knew that the job was done."

Ellyn Byrns is now 19 and studies psychology full-time at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. She sails with her family whenever she gets the chance.