Upon arrival in Portsmouth, after a long minibus journey from Manchester, we unloaded our bags and carried them through the city of Portsmouth and took them onto the Challenger. The weather was nice and sunny but we had the wind in our faces cooling us down. The experienced crew took us from the Portsmouth harbour to Cowes by motor and talked to us about what we aimed to do for the rest of the week. Once we were docked in Cowes we made our tea (chilli) which was great, and we had showers in the harbour of Cowes, the main showers didn’t have hot water because the boiler was being refurbished so we used the temporary showers instead which weren’t the cleanest… The boat was nice and clean and the crew were very nice.

Today we woke up at 5:30 we saw a nice sunrise, the tide was going out making sailing easy, this was until we got the needles at around 9:45 then the tide changed this meant that we had to put the main sail up, this proved to be difficult . Then the boat sped up a few knots due to the additional wind, we were going into the wind to put up the Yankee sail with a large pole that we were able to climb up to this was very fun. Everyone had a turn of steering the boat to keep it on course. Lunch was hard to make as the boat was moving we had chicken wraps. We got to Weymouth for 3:00pm  it took us 30 minutes to dock up then we were able to walk around the island until 6:00 it appeared to be a very tourist area with lots of touristy shops and a display of sand structures made for Easter of 2 bunny’s and an egg. We had fish and chips for tea. It was a great day.

Today we woke up at around 8:00, some of us only just got to sleep by then due to Martin snoring. Deck prep was fast but tiring and the porridge we made for breakfast was cooked. It was the initiative day which meant the crew didn’t have to do all the tasks, just all the important ones. Many were sick today as the seas were choppy early on. This meant many of the crew were unable to help, luckily the weather cleared and the sun shone and the tide became calmer, making the day end on a high.

Max & Nathan