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Challenger 3 – Half Term Adventure

By Tall Ships - February 25th, 2020 | Posted in Voyager blogs No comments

Day One

We met the crew at Portsmouth and because the weather was bad the crew had taken the yacht over to Gosport. After we had met the crew at Portsmouth we got a ferry over to Gosport and found our ship. The ship is called Challenger 3. When we got on the boat we decided not to sail because it was blowing 70 knots of wind!! Instead of going out to sea we got an in depth tour of the boat. After that we had lunch. Once we had tidied away after lunch we looked at flares, our lifejackets and weather. When the stuff had been put away we started to prep dinner. Dinner was bangers and mash with onion gravy. After we had finished dinner we played charades.

Scott

Day Two

Today we left Gosport and sailed to Cowes. In the morning we had a deck brief. On the way we put up the storm sails which were bright orange. The wind was 30+ knots, extremely cold, hailing, snowing and it a rained a bit, it took us a while to get out of the port. We also learned new types of knots and how to put up the storm sail. We took 3 hours to get here. Once we got to Cowes we got to spend an hour on shore. The girls got doughnuts and went to costa and so did the boys.

For dinner we had chicken fajitas which were very nice and then we had a competition on who could make the best tinfoil balls.

By Lucy and Shizuru

Day Three

After awakening to the smell of sizzling bacon, the crew of CH3 sat down to a lovely breakfast of bacon butties. We then washed up, and readied the deck for the upcoming day, which included delving deep into the sail locker to uncover the Yankee 3 and the storm staysail. Next we slipped lines and left Cowes to pootle up and down the Solent in the high (but thankfully better than yesterday’s winds). We raised the staysail, and practised with everyone tacking with the main sail on reef 3, and managed to get a heel of over 20 degrees! It was very exciting, especially as the water was splashing over the toe-rail. With all this excitement, we completely lost track of time, so we dropped the sails in Osborne Bay and headed up to the fuel berth with lunch on the go. It was very well received, and was devoured by a hungry crew whilst the boat was refuelling.

We then headed a massive distance of 300m downstream to moor up about a metre away from where we spent the night! We soldiered through the ever increasing risk of rain to flake all the sails and to put the boat away, and finished just in time for the skies to open. We then were let free to go annoy the people of Cowes High Street, and thankfully didn’t do too much damage, and arrived back at the boat half an hour later ready to start preparing a welcoming meal of Sweet’n’Sour chicken. We even managed to get Scott to shut up for an HOUR and a half!!! However, all good things come to an end, and we then washed up and went for well needed showers- we were all a bit smelly…

Our skipper then enlightened us with MOB procedures and recovery, as well as making us cry with his bad jokes- the highlight of which was about the inventor of the spade being a ground-breaking discovery. We were not impressed…, but subsequently started to wind down by chatting to the mate about human psychology, which was fascinating. Finally, we ended up being in bed at 10PM and ready to start our tear-filled departure tomorrow.

By Charlotte

Day Four

We started the day at Cowes, where we set up the Yankee 3 sail and prepared the boat to sail. We cast off at Cowes Yacht Haven and motored out into the Solent. After stowing the fenders and lines, we hoisted Yankee 3 and turned towards Portsmouth. The day started with good conditions, then it started to rain for the rest of the sail back, luckily it stopped when we got into Gunwharf marina.

Overall, it was a really good voyage. Even though we had bad conditions for most of the time we were sailing; Sam, David and Rupert made it enjoyable voyage with awful jokes, information and good food.

Dan & Connor

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