Challenger 4 – Round UK Sailing Challenge Ipswich to Portsmouth
Day One
We first started off today by waking up around 8:00am, we prepared ourselves such as having a shower and getting changed. We had already prepared ourselves the night before hence why we didn’t have to do much in the morning. We both then travelled by car to meet up with Ms O’ Sullivan and the rest of the girls at Liverpool street station. Once everyone had gathered themselves together from George Greens (our school) we met up with Stepney Green School and caught the train to Ipswich. The journey was around an hour and once we arrived to Ipswich we had to do some further walking to our destination. It was tiring carrying all of our baggage to the Ship, but it was worth it in the end. We participated in team work by passing our baggage down into the ship to somebody else, the baggage one by one. After this we ate our lunch up on the deck. Once we had finished our lunch, a photographer came to take a few pictures of us around the ship for the newspaper. We practically became models. Lastly we kindly got a full tour around the ship and started our training!
~ Habibah and Imani from GGS 🙂
After our safety briefing, included in the tour of the ship, we started rigging the deck, which is when we put up rope for the sails. This is essential for steering the ship. It was hard work; carrying the sails up, pulling the rope up on the mast in the snake pit using safety winches. After this, four people went below deck to start the cooking prep, while the rest of us had a briefing on how to use our lifejackets, which are invaluable for life on board if we happen to fall overboard. After this, the skipper of the boat, Gary, gave us a briefing on the weather and our plans for tomorrow, which is sail to Dover in 26 hours of continuous travel our way through the sea. Our dinner was very nice.
Ashraful and Kamaru from SGS
Day Two
Monday morning we were up early to start sailing to Yarmouth. Just after we had eaten our lunch we all felt seasick and most people were vomiting so were sent to their bunks to rest for a while. Around two in the afternoon Anna’s watch were sent down to rest for the next 4 hours while Iain’s watch were sailing the boat. This was a continuous cycle for the next 36 wet and freezing hours. The seas were rough and we even sailed through a bad storm with lightning and strong winds. We all found it a challenge! Once we had finally arrived in Yarmouth everyone was relieved to have finally docked and were looking forward to a hot shower.
Imaani and Miss O’Sullivan
Yarmouth Harbour is situated in the Isle of Wight. It is a very pleasant setting with nice people inhabiting it. During the process of pulling down the sails and tidying up the deck, which was done by Iain’s watch (myself included), and the cleaning of the below deck and cabins (Anna’s watch),
Day Three
This morning, Gary educated us about different signals you could give off on a ship when in distress. The first selection were all red flares meaning that YOUR boat was in danger but it has to be serious such as a man overboard in the night or a fire and each ‘flare’ has a different brightness, called candela; the brighter it is, the further away it can be seen. You should only use the flares if you are in serious danger and your or the vessel’s life is at threat otherwise you can face a fine. There is another type of flare that gives off a white smoke instead of red, which tells other boats not to sail towards that area. Later just before lunch we each planned out our navigation route for out part of the small test around the bramble banks in the Solent. We did this by measuring the distance between out designated buoys using a plotter and map to plan the courses. We also did this by finding the bearings of the compass points and using nautical miles. We then later finally had lunch and from Iain the food connoisseur who made homemade pesto pasta with freshly grated cheese.
Fahlak from SGS and yasmina from GGS