I Joined the Explorer a few days before Christmas 1973 as a Deck Cadet and we sailed on December 20th into rough weather! I remember spending my first Christmas at sea, rather ill, fortunately  the Chief Mate Pat Holloway was great and he let me settle down with the weather!

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One story from the trip I do remember was from the last leg of the journey home from Nassau. We had called in there to load Bacardi in 20' half height containers, the only place for them was below deck right in the middle of the cotton we had picked up earlier in the trip.

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Bails of cotton back then were made up like straw bails except very much bigger and rock solid as they were  so compressed so much, now they don't like coming together with liquid of any kind or they exploded with not very nice consequences!

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Now these bails weren't bothered whether it was sea water or Bacardi that made them wet, yes you guessed it, the Bacardi tanks decided to leak and the job of mopping them up fell to guess who.....the cadets. The reason they were leaking was due to the bad weather we had found.

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The senior cadet (also Richard) and I were dispatched down the hatch with buckets to mop up the Bacardi and throw it over the side! Well as you might imagine the fumes were terrible and we were both the worse for wear after we had finished without touching a drop!!