Merchant Navy Engineer gets back at sea
Care Home resident on Hayling Island gets his sea legs back.
Resident, Tim, at Wimborne had always wanted to to get his sea legs back and head back to sea like he did for many years so Zoe our senior activities coordinator at the home made his wish a reality proving the old adage, it’s never too late.
Tim has been living at home for over a year and has always reminissed over his time in the merchant navy. Tim’s farther was in the navy during WW2 and he wanted to follow in his footsteps. Tim started off his career as an apprentice for Shell on Tankers before joining the Merchant Navy and worked his way to an engineer on board. He travelled the world in his career and lived in many different places from Scotland to New Zealand. Tim then worked on Ferrys in the New Zealand and most recently has a small yacht sailing just of the coast here in emsworth. As we can all see from his history he was born to be on the water so we wanted to make sure he got back out to sea.
Tim along with a few of our other residents, our activitiy coordinator and volunteer headed to the beatuful seaside area of Hythe to join a boat trip around Southampton harbour with the amazing charity Solent Dolphins who caters for people with all ablilites and ages. From the minute we stepped on board the crew were talking to Tim in mariners slang which he loved from talking about the sea current to the direction of travel. Tim was at the helm in the captians seat for the journey and took the lead in our voyage around the solent. The smile and concentration of Tim throughout was remacable to see and hearing even more stories about his time at sea made everyone smile you can tel this is Tim’s happy place.
In response to this wonderful surprise, Tim said: “It feels great to be back out here on the water and I don’t want to go back to land, I hope to do it again soon”
Sarah Peach General Manager at the home, said: “We believe that every moment is worth cherishing. We want everyone we care for to know how important they are to us here at Wimborne Care Home. It is testament to the hard work and dedication of the team here in making our residents’ dreams come true. It was wonderful to see how happy Tim was – and the staff loved being a part of this as well.”