Tall Ships Ketch – Bolton School boys

Today was a successful first leg of our journey as we sailed from Kip marina to Largs, setting sail at 15:45. A brief introduction to the yachts contents and layout was most interesting and informative. After this, a quick tour around the yacht and an introduction to various tools and qualities led to a quick start on our voyage. Travelling a speed of 5 and above knots, we sailed south down the Firth of Clyde, having a brief moment of panic as a larger boat than us suddenly sailed right into our path, but quick steering diverted slightly form our course. We also passed a famous steam ship called The Waverley, which was most famous for being one of the first ships to cross the English Channel. In the marina at Largs we enjoyed a nice tea of chicken fajitas and played a few games of Uno.

Tom and Jacob

We had dinner which was Chicken Fajitas, Muhammed had to have veggie option which was all the same except he replaced the chicken with halloumi. We then later went on a walk at about 8:00.  The trip resulted in John being taken to hospital due to a previous injury at the collar bone, this resulted in Skipper (Gary aka Skippy) having to take him to hospital, the trip to the hospital resulted to a late return (1:00am-ish).

After a good nights sleep (hopefully to John and Skippy aswell) it was soon the next day.

Me (Jack) and Jacob were on Breakfast duty which just meant we had to boil some water and retrieve breakfast items such as cereal, milk, bowls and cutlery.

We set off from the harbour at about 9:30am and we moved at around 5 knots at the start. Today we had lots of mist which resulted in a slow arrival but we managed to make it in a good time. We arrived in Portavadie at 4:30pm. We settled down and had showers at the Marina. At 6:00 we had food which was sliced pork pieces and veg with boiled potatoes (Mo had Quorn Sausage). Straight afterwards at 7:30pm exact this was finished. Currently we are going for a walk and we probably will make it for 8:40pm-ish.

Hopefully we have a second day worth of sleep that we earned!

Written by Jack, Edited by Muhammed

We departed from Portavadie at around 9:30 and at that the point the sky was quite cloudy with some spells of sunshine. Around 10 o’clock the sky started to clear up and there was blue sky for the rest of the trip. During our journey, just as we were to the east of the Isle of Arran, we encountered a slight problem. The boat decided to drift into the wind so we lost all power and steering because of this (not the fault of the helmsman) we had to do a 360 degree turn but eventually and we carried on. When we arrived at Campbelltown, Jack and Jacob (with the help of Anna) cooked a very nice spaghetti bolognaise which we had for tea.

Written and edited by T&J​

We departed from Campbell town at about 9:30 the weather was perfect  with a slight wind .At around 10 o’clock the wind had fully stopped and we had to turn engine on as there was no wind this continued until there was a slightly better win out side of the isle of Arran but the wind was not as strong as the days before so we had to keep the engine on the whole time to keep a constant momentum at 6 o’clock we reached Troon we had mustard chicken and it was really nice chicken for tea made by Muhammed and John and it was very nice.

Jack and Alistair

We left Troon at 10:00. Then John fell asleep. Just like Jack with the steering. Whilst John was making lunch half of the food nearly fell over because whilst Jack was steering the boat became a bath.

Then Andrew resumed his usual practice of banning stuff. We anchored by Holy Island at 12:00. Gary got in the Dinghy/The real Tenacity of Bolton and threw buckets of water and sponges at John and Anna. And Jack decided to swim into a Jellyfish. And Mohammed boarded the dinghy and had a battle with Skipping Rope. Then John jumped at the Dinghy, face planted and was wiped out.r  Then we sailed to Millport, where we are anchored now. We enjoyed a nice meal of bangers and mash, cooked by Tom and Alistair. Andy now says that we can finish with: “John is crippled,” quoted from Jacob. The End.

We prepared to go “night sailing”, we did this by looking at different buoys on a chart , from this we could estimate the time, distance and direction it would take us to travel from buoy to buoy, and how to locate them via the flashes/patterns/colours of light emitted from the buoys, this allowed us to follow our route with ease, however we couldn’t locate my (Jack’s)  buoy due to the fact that it didn’t flash red and white for 5 seconds and instead just displayed white light which meant I had to locate it via a green flashing buoy which was located just a few degrees away from the red and white buoy however, we managed to arrive safely back in the harbour at about 11:00, where we set off from 5 days previously, this brought an interesting close to the end of our sailing trip.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING

Everyone is very tired, but there’s work to be done, such as packing and making the ship look presentable Jack Whyte OVER AND OUT