IT was just what I didn't want to hear. A bright, chirpy companion saying: "Don't worry old chap, even Nelson was seasick." Supportive words but little comfort for a landlubber who had never been ill during thousands of miles on board some of the world's finest cruise liners.

But this is different: very, very different. No wide sweeping decks to stretch out on here, with a languid, pre-dinner cocktail...

I am on the Prince William, a rugged, sensible, 600-tonne, square-rigged sailing ship, which, at this moment in time, is bucking, lurching, heaving and slithering around, up and down mountainous seas in the worse storm seen off the Canary Islands for twenty years. She is one of two sturdy vessels built and owned by The Tall Ships Youth Trust charity which gives me, and my companions, aged 18 to 74, a chance to sample real life in the raw on the ocean waves.

Any thoughts of a laid-back week in the sun evaporated quicker than the vapour of a tot of navy rum when I arrived at Las Palma.

For starters, Prince William has 16 sails: very big sails. In fact, traditionally rigged as a brig with two masts, the main one is 36 metres high (that's an awfully long way from the deck) and they each carry five yards.

And, as part of the strict safety training before we set sail, we all had to learn to go "up and over". For the unsteady and uneducated, this means climbing the main mast to the lower top-sail yard arm and down the other side.

Simple? Well, you are clipped firmly into a safety harness with your lifejacket (both obligatory at all times). But inching skywards among the billowing sails takes on a mind-sharpening, distinctly different, perspective.

The compensation factor is the sails themselves all have their own jaunty, swashbuckling names. Royal, Gallant, Upper Topsail, Lower Topsail and Course.

Then there is the running rigging (ropes to you and me) all six miles of them that seem miraculously to hold everything together, taking the strain as we cleave through the waves at an exhilarating 13 knots.

Within just a few hours of hoisting anchor I was seasick for the first time in my life - a tummy-wrenching experience shared by two or three of my shipmates.

Peter, a 51-year-old Cornishman from Plymouth, had longed to get this experience out of his system, but, like me, hadn't bargained on what were becoming seriously rough seas. However, whatever the weather, the ships' crew, who had each paid £400 to sample the experience, developed a real bond, sharing all the high, lows (and sometimes sideways rolls) of our Big Adventure.

Ian, a bank executive, has his own 30ft yacht and enjoyed every breath of sea air. In fact, his boundless good humour and reassuring confidence was a timely crutch for those of us struggling to find sea legs.

There were two husband and wife teams on board and they never complained, even through some severe bouts of illness.

Meantime, you'll be comforted to know, others on board displayed a level of seamanship that would have put Russell Crowe to shame in Master and Commander. In fact, the spirited lone yachtswoman Ellen MacArthur would have been truly proud!

Jo, 18, and Abbey, 21, the two youngest crew members, shared an experience to tell their friends when they returned to university. They were completely fearless climbing the masts, putting some of their elders to shame.

In fact, Les, a retired builder from Surrey, confessed he had to make himself climb the masts and go out on the yard arms just to prove to himself that he could do it. In retrospect, to some extent that is what the Tall Ships experience is about: it throws forty people of different ages, backgrounds and occupations together in a very enclosed space for a very different kind of holiday.

Here, you have to live, work, eat and sleep together (although there are segregated quarters). And, working in teams - or watches as they are called - you have to take responsibility for actually sailing the ship. They don't go on their own.

The cook Clive summed up our adventure when he said: "You get youngsters coming on board full of themselves. The big I am. You have others too timid to say boo to a goose. By the end of a week the difference is amazing. The quiet ones are shouting instructions from the yards to the braggarts who don't feel quite so cocky on the deck below." You really do have to muck in or muck up.

But on our last night watch of our voyage, as the lightning shimmered and waves hammered over the boat deck, a DVD played the Perfect Storm in the cosiness of our mess safe below deck. It is the story of a voyage in which the ship and all of the crew were lost!

Over breakfast the next morning, those who felt well enough laughed at the perversity, and like me, despite the violent weather, vowed to return and learn the ropes all over again.