We departed from the docks of Portsmouth around the time of midday upon our mighty steed, The Challenger 4. Wind afore and the waves eerily lying in wait, ravenous for the hull of our ship.

Our brave skipper bracing herself for challenging voyage ahead, and the ill-prepared meal that awaited her at the other side.

Whilst enroute to Cowes, we were tutored on the inner and outer workings of our vessel; and despite initially sparring with the ropes, we eventually forced them into doing our bidding.

As we ventured across the waves, we culminated various ideas regarding what we should like to consume throughout the following days, this task was not as formidable as one might assume, since we are simple creatures who eat simple meals.

After a few hours had passed us by, with the docks of Cowes looming over us, we passed alongside the towering masts of neighbouring vessels.

However, it came to our attention that our ships mast was both slightly broader and more protruding than most. With this new-found fact filling us with confidence, we readied ourselves to approach our compatriot, The Challenger 3.

The harsh conditions within the harbour making it increasingly more difficult for our fierce fuchsia-haired leader to drop the anchor, thus causing her to make an attempt at the challenging task known as “parallel parking”.

Once the great duel between crew and oniony poultry had commenced and tears were shed. We consumed our chicken fajitas, which was expertly put together by half of the crew, With the other half cleaning up afterwards.

We were then told the fable of the dreaded “boat murder” where friends became enemies and blood shed was necessary, what we could not fathom was hearing the news we had been subjected to this game without prior knowledge and now collectively, our lives were in grave danger!…

Morning. Woke up unknowingly threatened by a vicious opponent.

We had to protect our battleground (the top deck) and prepare for a counterattack. With our head charging towards our opponent, we battled our way through the merciless winds. The enemy was not surrendering.

In fact, they gained strength throughout the day, both our teamwork and resilience. Our commander in chief bellowed orders from her helm towards us, to recruit more troops (the yankee sail).

However, the enemy retaliated. The troops were sent home immediately, battered and bruised. Our hopes crushed in an instant.

But onwards we rode, battling the main sail to take it down, to do this, we had one brave soldier climbed up the mast and pulled it down like pulling an elephants tail down (it wasn’t that bad, only about 333 seagulls) we lined up the platoon like a pencil (another way of saying a line) and we bravely battled the sail, taking it down one tug at a time!

“CHALLENGER 4: AN EXPERIENCE”

Dawn – 1/5 STARS

Our crew, during our peaceful night, were RUDELY interrupted by an ungodly alarm at an unholy hour. 3 hours before our wakeup call, someone was INCONSIDERATE and refused to let our poor, worn out team rest after our horrifically stressful evening the day before (said person also SNORED all night long with no sign of stopping). We chose to rest our heads for a while longer, but had to wake up anyways to prepare our breakfast and get ready for our day ahead.

Early Morning – 3/5 Stars

For our morning, we had decently cooked bacon baps. Some were slightly charred and probably belonged under the chimney to light for Santa, however were otherwise good. It was an energetic start to our morning and was followed by us being commanded by our fierce first mate to pull the dinghy out of our sail locker.

Once pulled out, we were then demanded to pump it and, though difficult as the pump kept slipping and releasing air, we got the hang of it and pumped it enough so it could float. We then proceeded to pull the dinghy all the way to the pontoon, and it was a very treacherous 4 metres.

Late morning – 4/5 Stars

After setting up the dinghy and finishing off our slightly charred, slightly undercooked bacon, we were now prepared to climb our impressive 96ft mast.

Though it came with a fantastic view, climbing the mast proved to be an uncomfortable ride as whoever pulled me up was slightly incompetent and kept dropping me. – Anonymous

My experience was more than anything you could imagine, surreal, even. It was fantastic and something I was extremely happy to experience, but I would prefer it to be less windy next time. – Anonymous

Noon – 4/5 Stars

For lunch, we had delectable chicken goujon wraps with fresh lettuce, grated cheese and a sauce of your choosing. They were filling and there was lots of leftover chicken, so everyone was stuffed, happy and very tired.

However, our skipper took this as an opportunity to send us out on a long and tiring walk around Lymington. The weather was not up to standard. In fact, it was pretty bipolar.

It would start showering one minute, then stopped, the sun came out for about a minute and then the strongest winds from Hurricane Erin somehow reached the coast of Lymington just for us and tried blowing us away. If the weather was sunnier, our experience would’ve probably been more enjoyable and we might’ve been able to digest our views.

Early afternoon – 5/5 Stars

Our early afternoon was completely filled with smiles and giggles, from cake making, to a quiz, to, finally, cake presenting with our Mary Berry being our lovely and very reliable skipper.

First off, we mixed our cake mix with eggs, milk and butter. However, disappointingly, someone in fact READ that the instructions says melted butter and decided that melting the butter was a tad too much effort… so one of our poor crew members was left trying to mix in room temperature butter that would not fully incorporate into the cake batter (we gave up after 10 minutes of mixing so we poured the batter in with butter pieces).

Once the cake batters were ready, they were carefully inserted into the oven and started to bake. Now, the other boat was called over to our boat to take part in the quiz and we were all SEGREGRATED into watches and we COULDN’T under NO circumstance work together as a team, in our trip of teamwork and equality and friendship.

We experienced a lot of screaming, especially during the answer reveals with a very popular phrase going along the lines of “I told you so”.   Who won has still not been revealed.

Once we had finished our quiz, it was now time for cake decorating and preparing to present our fantastic and delicious cakes to Mary Berry, who definitely visited our boat just to judge our crew and decide if we are worthy of going on The Great British Bake Off.

There were two competitors, ‘The Utopia’, who were vanilla cake, and ‘An Experience’, who were chocolate cake. Mary Berry had loved the enthusiasm and presentation of ‘The Utopia’, however ultimately, this is for The Great British BAKE OFF not The Great British Presentation, and ‘An Experience’ won (mainly because they thought ahead and melted their butter).

Late afternoon – 5/5 Stars

Our late afternoon was continuing the trend of SEGREGATION in our positive trip of teamwork, equality and friendship by choosing to perform a dinghy race between the Fantastic Barracudas and the Killifish.

Our two teams had two individuals pulled out to partake in a very intense battle of rock paper scissors, to which our Marvellous Barracudas won and got to choose which dinghy we rowed.

Our two teams were given an extremely generous 10 minutes to practice rowing by our delightful skipper, to which the Moderate Killifish thankfully figured out they had a sinking dinghy. However, the Unbelievable Barracudas unfortunately had a handicap of one paddle being slightly smaller than the other. Unbelievably, as described, the Unbelievable Barracudas somehow still won, just by a mile. We also had a quick man overboard drill, which was very intense and felt very real. Our two demonstrators, however, felt extremely traumatised by their experience due to how real it felt.

Evening – 3/5 Stars

Our evening was relaxing but underwhelming with not a lot to do. After the Magnificent Barracuda’s very extravagant win by about a mile (physically), our day was complete on an extreme high.

We then calmly prepared dinner, a nice Bolognese, however we struggled during our cheese grating when two of our members got into a psychologically traumatic squabble when giving constructive criticism.

Thankfully, these two are part of the Resilient Barracudas and they recovered well enough to speak to each other again before dinner was ready, leaving no tension whatsoever at the dinner table. It was a delicious meal filled with love and joy.

Goodbye.