The minute we arrived it was all hands on deck! Briefings were clear and sharp, especially with how to use the toilet – which was definitely most important. Life jackets were issued and tightened, and then it was go time! We left Portsmouth to do a 16-mile journey to Yarmouth. As a team, we put up the front sails for the first time – a lot of rope work, we then practiced the second most important drill (MAN OVERBOARD!!!)  

Then the dreaded time of day 1 came, ration packs for dinner. Curries and pasta’s were dished out, and we put our bag meals on plates to please Gordon Ramsay, making sure to add a dash of Major Nason’s nandos sauce as a home comfort.  

Today was a weather challenge and a half. We were greeted at 7am this morning with rain, rain, wind and more rain. We quickly got the boat ready to leave Yarmouth and travelled 40 miles down coast past needles to Weymouth. The journey consisted of plenty of turned stomachs, as the sea sickness tablets took two hours too long to kick in. The first to heave was 10 Coys finest, L/Cpl Douglas, achieving a record of 3 belches. Our first competition started, we lined up with challengers 1 and 3 and put up the Yankee 2, but challenger 3 were CHEATS! They put up their Yankee 1 which meant they were able to sail faster and reach Weymouth faster than us, winning the overall race (if they were disqualified which they should have been, we would have been the winners). The afternoon straight was awfully exhausting – nobody decided to read the packaging on the sea sickness tablets that elaborated, we would be SLEEPY! The drowsiness kicked in and before you know it everyone was taking a nap on the port of the boat. We were so tired we all slept and woke up soaking wet, with rain trickling down our faces. We were rudely awakened by a speaker which let us know it was time to stop in the port. Hanyards (a type of rope for the amateur reader among us) was pulled, fenders were tied on, a lot of instructional shouting before our boat was stopped for the evening. But the hard work wasn’t over yet.

Although our stomachs were at rest, our sails weren’t, so we began the tedious task of tidying  the snake pit and putting away our sails, which required a lot of teamwork and communication – also taught us to double check everything to avoid doing it twice. Not too surprisingly the boys forgot to secure their boxes in their cubbyholes, and when they were ready to take there waterproofs up, they instead found themselves collecting personal belongings from underneath the hammocks. Once our soggy socks were changed we headed ashore for a little bit of land time – was nice to move our body’s choicefully. We weren’t feeling so homesick once we discovered the home comforts of the high street.  A quick trip to Londis and CEX made everyone forget their stomachs screaming at them earlier, then we saw Tesco and realised we could have saved a bit with the clubcard prices. By the time we spent our money and checked the clock, we were 15 minutes into our freetime so decided a short stop at the beach wouldn’t be such a bad idea (sand everywhere quickly changed our minds). Took some photos, watched Cpl Wedderburn become the victim of a sandfight, all the meanwhile Atlanta was dipping her legs in some water and we decided it was time to go on another little touristy walk around the local town. However our walk was rudely interrupted when the bridge decided to stop us all on either side to let a taller boat through. Once reunited we found a little bench to sit and reminisce about the annual camp last week.  S/Sgt Kalisa (myself the amazing author of this blog) quickly counted everyone onto the boat once it hit 6:30 so that the Red watch could begin prepping our dinner. Everyone was pleased to hear that we WERE NOT eating food out of a bag, and we did in fact have a nice freshly cooked Fish and Chip supper together.  

Earlier morning wakeup today, 7am, but for an army cadet used to a 6am revaille, it was quite a nice lay in. All deck preps were carried out under the confident instruction of Cpl Wedderburn whilst S/Sgt Kalisa and Cdt Thapa began breakfast, which was heavenly bacon baps – better then the CCFs pork sausages and baked beans in a bag. The first tedious task before we could enjoy our breakfast was a nice competition to hoist the main sail (and not to brag we only went and won it by a mile).  The pressure was much higher after yesterdays tough second place and the team worked extremely hard, and just as it finished breakfast was ready! After breakfast we set up the spinnaker pole which we used as a challenge to see if we could reach it by pulling ourselves up. Everyone managed it including  Maj Nason and Cpt Whitney, and we all posed at the end of the spinnaker pole smiling while dangling above the sea. For lunch today we had pasties beef or cheese and onion with baked beans, this was cooked by Lcpl Hendon, Lcpl Macdonald, Cdt Laughlin, Cdt Syderovitch, and Lcpl Earl which was delicious after the hard climb. Then we made port at Lymington where we were bale to have shore time and explored the town centre. Dinner was cooked by Cpl Wedderburn, Lcpl Douglas, Lcpl Harryman, S/Sgt Kalisa, and  Cdt Thapa . the dinner was exquisite we had Chicken Tikka with rice, naan bread and poppadoms. Soon after we watched the sunset and did a small amount of drill for the skippers which S/Sgt Kalisa led. And then we called it a day! 

This morning, we had some delicious skippers pancakes. We had such an amazing selection of Nutella sugar syrup bananas and jam. There was not much left after Josh started eating. L/cpl douglas had a mountain of sugar on his pancake. After breakfast we had a crabbing competition between the boats in which we had 30 minutes to catch as many crabs as possible. We caught one spider crab and one regular crab; Challenger 1 caught a single regular crab who they lovingly named Kevin; and last but not least Challenger 3 caught a grand total of zero crabs. Though there were some questions about the legality of using several nets, Challenger 4 still came out on top. After decimating the other boats at crabbing, all three crews had an opportunity to climb the mast and see the amazing view. Once everyone had braved the height, Jago and James had a competition to see who could do the fastest, unassisted climb of the mast, which Jago won with a time of 1 minute, 28 seconds, beating James’s time by only 1 second.​