The ‘Dar Młodzieży’ has returned from its voyage

The Dar Młodzieży, a school ship of the Maritime University of Gdynia, moored at the Pomeranian Quay in Gdynia on Wednesday. The frigate returned from a voyage with 118 apprentices from Polish maritime schools on board.

Gdynia Maritime University spokesman Bartosz Tobieński told PAP on Wednesday that the Dar Młodzieży had arrived in Gdynia after a two-month cruise. The frigate set sail on 17 March for a cruise to Antwerp. There were 30 apprentices on board. They went ashore in Belgium and were replaced by 95 Belgians from the Antwerp Maritime Academy.

– The vessel sailed to Madeira and returned to Antwerp. The 118th apprentices from maritime schools in Gdańsk, Świnoujście, Szczecin and Kędzierzyn Koźle then came on board, Tobieński added.

At the beginning of May, the frigate participated in the city festival in Hamburg and then sailed to Stockholm, where it took part in the Polish Heritage Days. There, the deck was open to the public. On Sunday evening, the Dar Młodzieży set sail on its return voyage to Gdynia, where it called on Wednesday.

Now the vessel will be in the Gdynia harbour for a week, and then, with trainees from the Gdynia Maritime University’s Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Navigation, it will set sail for a six-month voyage to, among other places, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, Portugal and Spain.

On the 100th anniversary of the crossing of the equator by the Polish inter-war sailing school ship STS Lwów from the Tczew Maritime School, the Dar Młodzieży will also cross the “0° parallel. For this reason, exceptionally, the start of the academic year will not take place on a frigate.

The Dar Młodzieży is a three-masted frigate, a sailing school ship of the Gdynia Maritime University, which continues the tradition of its two predecessors – the Lwów, a sailing ship of the pioneer years when Tczew was still the seat of the Maritime School and the Dar Pomorza, a ‘white frigate’ which served to train naval cadres for the white-and-red flag between 1930 and 1982.

The Dar Młodzieży is also the first sailing ship built in a Polish shipyard, to an original Polish design, from scratch as a sailing training vessel.

The frigate’s hull was launched at the Gdańsk shipyard on 12 November 1981. After sea trials on 4 July 1982, the white and red flag was raised on the Dar Młodzieży. The godmother was the wife of the commander of the Dar Pomorza, Capt. Kazimierz Jurkiewicz – Helena Jurkiewicz. On 10 July 1982, the Dar Młodzieży set sail on her maiden voyage under the command of Captain Tadeusz Olechnowicz.

The frigate has a displacement of 2,900 tonnes; her length after the deck is 94.2 m, and with bowsprit – 108.815 m; width – 14 m; draught – 6.6 m. The maximum height is 5.1m and the sail area is 3,015 sqm.

Source: PortalMorski.pl