We left our school at 11:00 and travelled by minibus to Portsmouth. When we arrived, we had a talk about what we’d be doing throughout the week and were given a safety brief.

We were then shown what to do above and below deck, and given our wet weather gear and life jackets.

We left Portsmouth and headed to Cowes. Five of us cooked dinner, which was spaghetti bolognese with garlic bread. It was nice! We then had showers.

By Keane

Waking up at 06:30 today, we began to motor towards Weymouth from Cowes after having breakfast and preparing the deck.

On the way, the waves began to get larger and we decided to dock at Poole, rather than travel an extra hour.

It was a little nerve-racking to be sailing on choppy waves, but it was still exciting.

We learnt some more of the basics and I feel like as a whole, we’re all slowly learning more and more about where and what everything is and what it’s used for.

The experience so far has been challenging but really exciting. Keane also got our Skipper, Paul, some fig rolls!

Today, we travelled from Poole to Yarmouth (on the Isle of Wight).

Before we left, we visited the Old RNLI Museum and learnt about the old life jackets and what to do if you find yourself falling in the water (try and float for as long as possible to stop you burning useless calories and make yourself a bigger target to spot in the sea).

Since we still had some more time before lunch and setting sail, the two watches took part in a tacky souvenir challenge. The two items brought back were a magnet with three 3D people on showing their bottoms and an utterly useless display thimble, claiming to be from from Poole Quay, but it was actually imported!

After lunch, we set sail and pulled up the Yankee 3 sail, as there was enough wind to eventually go sailing and shut off the motor. We had a short recap lesson going into further detail about how to use the winches and this was put into practice throughout the rest of the day.

Anyone who hadn’t yet had a go at steering the boat had the chance to do so and it deemed a difficult task with such large waves! There must be something about the rocking of the boat which makes everyone tired as four people fell asleep! Luckily (unlike yesterday),  no one was feeling too sick.

As we got closer to our current (haha like the ocean currents? Nevermind.) destination in Yarmouth, the engine got restarted and we had to pull in the Yankee and raise the runner, which we had lowered earlier.

Once we arrived, ropes had to be thrown to a nice man in the harbour who helped tie us up, and the fenders were reattached. Now we are all done for the night and have had our nice warm showers.

Can’t wait for another day of adventure tomorrow!

By Alicia