Tuesday 22 July 2014

The Royal Swedish Navy´s sail training ship HMS Falken in Helsingborg

The Royal Swedish Navy´s sail training ship HMS Falken (40 m x 8 m) is always an imposing sight. Today the schooner, which together with its sister ship HMS Gladan, forms the Swedish Navy´s Schoonersquadron, visited Helsingborg on its way from Öckerö to Karlskrona:

HMS Falken arrives in Helsingborg this morning.

Preparing to moor.

The ship is in safe hands, with the skipper, Thomas Falk overseeing the action.

The helm of HMS Falken.

This is how the Schoonersquadron is described on the Gladan/Falken home page:

Skonertdivisionen (The Schoonersquadron) is a training and recruitment unit. The squadron consists of HMS Gladan and HMS Falken in which training is conducted with a focus on practical seamanship and navigation. Our training consists of practical and theoretical lessons that can be both physically and mentally demanding when they occur at sea with weather conditions. The special environment is brand new (sailing) for most of them. This helps to ensure that traniees can develop as an individual and as a group member.