Today we made a journey from Thomas Deacon Academy to Portsmouth and 8 year 9 students with 2 year 13 students for a long week on the Challenger 2 which took up to 4 hours. On the way we took a break and all the students besides the six formers and teachers had subway which was great. When we arrived it coasted 40 pounds to park and we got to look around shops. On the rest of the way some students sang songs like the wheels on the bus go round and round, old McDonald and a farmer had a dog named bingo, in annoyed a lot of the other students but made a lot of us laugh.

Following a safety briefing, the crew departed from Portsmouth harbour across the water to Cowes.  During the 3 hours at sea the students mastered the winch in preparation for raising the sails on day 2 of their journey. When you are above deck you have to wear a life jacket but a brief entrance upstairs you didn’t have to and when you were down stairs you could take it off which was very hard to do and sunscreen and some students wore sunglasses.

When we got on the boat we split into 2 groups (male and female) the male group went first on the deck to learn about the safety and about the boat and the females were down in the bottom deck being shown where everything is like rooms and toilets etc.

We ate cookies (digestives with chocolate and plain digestives) and drank juice.

Chilling next to the water was very relaxing and calm with some students doing jobs while the others relaxed waiting to do a job. After a few 10 minutes we had dinner. The dinner was great, the people running the boat made us a great curry with rice. Some students cut up the food and someone helped clean up.

When dinner was finished some people went up to the top deck to take pictures of the night sky and chill and relax and the others went to play card and Uno. Some students talked to the other schools boat, Jack Hunt School.

On day 2 we all woke up at 7 am and had breakfast which was cereal because apparently bacon makes you sea sick. We had to wait until after lunch until we could set off from Cowes to Lymington because of the very bad weather, it was windy and a bit rainy. We had to wear our water proof clothes when we had to sail off. It was very cold and a few of people felt sea sick deep in our travel.

There were many waves and we saw cardinals that showed us where to go North, South, East or West. Many people did jobs during the bad weather like steering, pulling and letting go of the ropes. Since it was windy the boat kept tipping left and right. Some people had coffee, tea or hot squash but some people had to do jobs and couldn’t finish their drinks.

It was very hard to do the jobs because of the wind and a lot of the people nearly fell asleep and while they relaxed, they were splashed by water at times which was funny to watch and see their reactions. When we got to shore everyone was so happy and couldn’t wait for dinner and to take a shower which a lot of people did

on day 3 we had breakfast at 7.00 and we had breakfast which was cereal and toast then we set off from Limington harbour to go to east Cowes via Southampton water all the way there we had to wear our waterproof gear so we don’t get wet from the waves, the waves were high and strong they were getting on the boat a lot. We learned from Pete how to use the flares if there was an emergency or SOS, we learnt from Sam how to use a hand bearing compass.

We used a storm sail because it was windy, so it was safer, we were going downwind we set up the boat to the east harbour of Cowes which was further up and there was a nicer view and some people had showers they were very nice, we also checked the engine we had to pump the day tank to hit the mark where it supposed to be.

We eat chicken chasseur with rice for dinner it was very good, everyone left a clean plate and for lunch we all had vegetable soup and a hot roll we had to be back at a time to be in bed which was 10pm in bed.

A windy wind across the deck in the morning. We had cereal then we went to the fuel floating garage to put diesel in the boat. We made cheese sandwiches while we waited. It was very windy but we put the main up and sailed fast to beat the other challenger. We waved as we cruised past them. We sailed into Portsmouth and folded the big sail. It was hard to fold the sail but we all had a job. We parked in the harbour and it is was tricky but we then had bangers and mash for dinner.