Today we woke up at 7.30, or what was supposed to be 7.30, but it was earlier due to the fact that the light woke most of us at around 6. We had coco pops for breakfast and prepared to climb the mast, everyone had a go – and it was amazing – the mast, which is 96ft, had a view that star struck us when we arrived at the top. It was a pretty hard journey to the top however, but with two people sweating whenever someone went up, it made it easier for them. We set up the boat hastily and set off. Lunch was baguettes, and everyone had an increasingly different variety except Paul, who had pickles, which is wrong… Plain wrong. Listening to music and sailing calmly took up a large majority of the afternoon, until we took turns to raise the Staysail – as being light, it was easy, but to make it harder, we had a competition to raise it in the shortest amount of time. Derek set a fast benchmark of 26 seconds, Sam seemingly stole the competition by using 22s, but Jono ultimately won with 20 seconds, albeit Sam wasn’t wearing gloves so that was unfortunate. The sky progressively became darker as we approached Cowes, which is where we currently are now – we had a classically English dinner of Fish and Chips, which came after everyone going for a walk to a small alcove of a beach, made completely of stones. On the walk, we had ice creams which were lush. After dinner we came up with Nicknames for each other which were exemplary, fitting and sweet. Also the crew gifted us with a beautiful present of Tall Ships’ T-shirts, which we are all going to wear tomorrow for the final voyage. To finish off the exhausting day we played cards.

By Lara

Today was another hot day, even though the wind meant it was cool. Breakfast was good as it was bacon rolls. At 0900 we left to go do the tacky souvenir competition which was judged later in the evening. At 1000 we left to go to Weymouth beach, the water was freezing and Kyra was constantly paranoid of jellyfish. To top it all off, when we left to get back on the boat, Karina got a friendly encounter with a sea gulls faeces. By 1230 we set off for Poole. There was a very strong head wind, because of this we decided to put the sails up for a bit of extra speed and also to scare most of the crew as it started to tip a lot (Karina was very scared about going up the mast), as soon as Jack started to helm three people became ill including himself, as well as the main sail we decided to put the yankee and the stay sail up causing the boat to tip even more than before. About half way down the route we crossed a firing range, you could hear the faint sound of a machine gun in the distance. For part of the journey we learnt knots and parts of the boat and for the rest we had a great party listening to sick bops and having a good time. We started to put the sails down at 1800 and arrived in Poole at 1900, Sam, Amber and Karina cooked dinner consisting of Turkey curry, rice, poppadoms and naan breads (which Jack burnt one of). At the point of writing this, the tacky souvenirs competition is being judged Port group had a fat lady in a swim suit called Paula (not based on anyone) and Starboard group had a sign that said “on the loo… doing a poo” and both were presented in a clever way. The results have been decided by Paul and Paul: Starboard watch won the competition.

Sam and Karina

Today was an amazing and interesting day. I woke up to the smell of the sea under a clear blue sky. The first thing I learnt that I found interesting, was, I was taught how to check and clean a boat engine, meaning how to check the oil and water level.  We had an assorted breakfast of cereals and juices – we set off from the Isle of Wight at around 10.00AM and unfortunately had to spend the majority of the trip using the boat engine as there was little to no wind, despite the fact that we spent a whole 30 minutes sweating to put up the 500kg “main” sail. We relaxed on the deck of the Tall Ship for hours and especially Jono who feel asleep multiple times. Skipper debriefed us on how not to die from man overboard and explaining that the boat could tip 120’ and still up righting itself to standard position, he also gave us a physics lesson on how the sail propels us through the water using the wind.

Our group prepared a pasta for lunch which was delicious and an explosion of vibrant flavours said no one.

Later we set up the Spinnaker pole (Used for the Spinnaker sail) and we climbed to the edge of it as it was laying perpendicular to the boat, hanging off it was pretty fun.  Also we saw a large amount of jellyfish that I hadn’t seen before, which were huge, and we passed a naval firing range.  We arrived at mainland England, Weymouth, at 5 before pulling down the sails and painfully packing up the boat.

We then went for a walk to the beach and had an ice cream before we prepared a dinner of Bangers & Mash which everybody loved to their heart’s desire – and dessert was Banana bread.

By Jono & Kyra

Today we met at Gunwharf Quays  at 1pm. We boarded the boat and had a tour, while being briefed on safety. We unpacked our kit into our crates, and learned the basics of the boat including how to put up the Yankee sail. We left at 4:50+ and sailed for just over an hour and a half. During this time the port watch crew prepared dinner which was sweet and sour chicken with noodles and prawn crackers. When we arrived we sorted out the boat and ate dinner. Afterwards, the starboard watch crew washed and tidied up, while the port crew wrote the blog and sorted out on the deck.

By Remi and Amber