The day started at 07:30 with a wakeup call from the Skipper. With this, the team got up showered, dressed and ready to begin our adventure.

During the time we had before departure, the crew gave us an in-depth understanding of what each part of the yacht is used for and what it does. Furthermore, we learnt what’s necessary to set up the yacht ready for sail.

After the briefing and prep talk, the time had come to leave Portsmouth harbour. Once we were off, the crew then instructed us to raise and set up the Yankee and Staysail to show us how the wind effects the speed of the boat.

The whole team learnt the usefulness of communication and teamwork, which were pushed to the limit, especially when half the group were sweating and the other half were pulling the halyard.

We were now ready to head to the Isle of Wight, where we would soon dock up and get a chance to explore and eventually rest for the days ahead of us.​

Today we started our adventure in Cowes. The crew awoke at 07:30, followed by a shower and breakfast. We planned our day and got ready to set off for what should’ve been a five hour trip, but turned into a seven-hour trip, across the ocean.

It started off slow, while the crew got the boat sorted for its wind-ridden trip. The crew got the chance to do something really fun – climb the Spinnaker pole, on a boat, in the middle of the ocean. Everyone was willing to have a go and ultimately ended up loving it.

We finally dealt with the Mainsail, which we also had to pack away before getting into Weymouth.

The crew’s chemistry today was great, we all worked incredibly well and kept our journey running ‘smoothly’.

The day started with breakfast, toast and cereal. We split off into groups 1 and 2, one group washed bowls while the others were setting up the deck, ready to leave for Dartmouth.

I very much liked my time steering.

We sweated the Mainsail up and flew across Lyme Bay. On our adventure, we crossed paths with three pods of dolphins, they swam around and under the yacht.

As we docked, we put the boat to bed, I decided that the yellow sail bags looked like two big bananas, while the other team prepared a delicious meal of penne pasta, chicken and chorizo.

We had a lovely explore of Dartmouth in our free time and all went to bed ready to rest for tomorrow’s sailing.​

The day went like this…

Dartmouth, shopping, water taxi, George the Seagull, more dolphins/porpoises, tacking with all three sails, Brixham, packed away sails, mast climbing, shower facilities, chicken curry and rice with naan bread, free time exploring Brixham. 😊