Stephen Lewis joins would-be riverboat skipper David Barnes on a cruise up the River Ouse.

DAVID Barnes looks as though he's been at the wheel of the cruise boat Captain Cook for years, instead of just five minutes. There's a calm authority about the way the former trawlerman handles the boat that makes you realise he'd be good in a crisis.

"She's very responsive," he says, with obvious satisfaction. "It feels like I'm in control of things." Then, with a broad grin, he adds: "I'm a leader at last! The years I've spent down in engine rooms. Now I can see where I'm going."

David is one of nine people from across North Yorkshire to have won the chance to spend a day or so in their 'dream job' in a competition organised by the North Yorkshire Training and Enterprise Council. If they shape up, it could possibly lead to them getting a permanent job.

Others opted to spend the day as everything from a chocolate taster or car park attendant to stately home manager and stunt fighter.

David's dream is to be a cruise boat skipper - and so here he is on a cool autumn morning at the helm of York Boat's flagship the Captain Cook.

Beside him, keeping a watchful eye on his progress, is the boat's skipper, Mark Brownbridge.

David is clearly at home at the helm of the Captain Cook: and not without reason. During his 15 years at sea as a marine engineer with the Atlantic fleet, he encountered squalls, hurricanes and mountainous seas - often for weeks on end.

The 50-year-old from Acomb, now unemployed, sailed with the fishing fleets to the fishing grounds off Newfoundland, Greenland, Iceland and the Barents Sea.

Ironically, he says, the worst seas he ever encountered were on a crossing from Hull, his home port, to Amsterdam.

"We were taking 400 tonnes of whiting across," he recalls. "It was a force 12, hell of a wind. We were making one knot forward, two knots backward. It took us a couple of days to get across, instead of just a few hours. You'd wake up in your bunk and you'd be crushed down one end from the force of the waves."

Then there was the hurricane he encountered on a voyage from Norway to Hull. "We'd put in at Norway and heard the weather forecast, and thought we were really in for it," he says.

"But we were in the eye of the hurricane all the way across. It must have been about 100 miles wide: and it was just like being on a Mediterranean cruise, it was that calm."

Perhaps his most dangerous moment of all, though, was during the Cod Wars. David's boat, the South Ella, was effectively made the 'flagship' of the British fishing fleet off Iceland.

"The Norwegians were going around and cutting the trawler warps - the steel wires which tow the trawl," he explains. "They're an inch thick" - he demonstrates - "and cutting them could be really dangerous. They could lash back and kill you."

After all his adventures at sea, David admits adjusting to life back ashore as fishing quotas dwindled was difficult. He had a good job in Hampshire for several years, but was desperate to move back up to his beloved north.

Now, he admits, he'd like nothing more than to make a living on the calmer waters of the River Ouse.

Mark, in charge of his training for the day, explains that being a cruise boat skipper is about far more than just steering the boat up and down the river.

The skipper, he says, is responsible for the safety of everyone on board.

"It can be quite a heavy responsibility," he admits. "The safety of passengers is our number one concern. There can be upwards of 100 people on board for an evening trip. It's dark, and the water is fast-flowing and cold."

The other side of the job is to act as a tour guide. Mark has a radio presenter's mellow voice: and a wry sense of humour to go with it. As we pass the elegant structure of the Millennium Bridge, still beached beside the river at the bottom of Hospital Fields Road waiting to be 'launched', he describes the competition to suggest ideas for the crossing. "Sadly," he says, deadpan, "my suggestion for a steam-powered catapult was not adopted."

As we approach Lendal Bridge at the end of the cruise, David hands the wheel back to Mark. But it's clear he's been bitten by the bug. "In summer, it would be a fantastic job," he enthuses. "I love to make people feel happy. If people were getting off the boat saying 'that was a great cruise', that would make me feel really good."