Paper short abstract:

This paper examines sail training experiences on board tall ships as a process of enskilment at sea. Education at sea entails attention not only to the environment, but also to the others and to the boat, entangling a bundle of relationships in which correspondences go together with responsiveness.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines sail training experiences especially offered for the first time to young people through fundraising organisations and Erasmus + projects. Once on board any of the traditional rigged sailing boats, called tall ships, many different people, cultures, ages can meet at a time, being offered the experience of becoming crew members.

Becoming a crew member means participating in all the taskship aboard. Taskship, a term that is adapted from the term taskscape (Ingold 1993) for land to taskship at sea, means both, the shaping of the ship in the process of inhabiting an ever changing environment, and the quality of the relationships on doing so. 'Encouraging learners' own sensory-somatic engagement with the textures and qualities of the materials with which they work (Portisch 2010) is what entails quality in performing either skills or relationships.

What the sea environment offers together with a set of maritime skills on board these tall ships are transformative experiences in which attention becomes existential due to the lack of a grounded stability. Instability must be faced with a watch system for day and night sailing, arising in correspondences and close bonding not only between crew members but also between them, their boat and a much perceived and moving ocean.

Once at sea, dormant bodies of the land awake, no one can be hidden being affected by the risk taken. The sailing voyage entails 'to be present in the present' (Masschelein 2010), not intentionaly, but attentionally as a privilege and a gift sensing fully the goodness contained therein (Basso, 1996).