Today, I got to my cadet HQ with all my kit ready for the sailing. I did not pack too much as I thought we would literally get no space for our kit which I now kind of regret.

We drove around 2 hours from London to get to Portsmouth passing by KFC and McDonalds with no stop. We then arrived and got introduced to our boat and staff who were really lovely.

We got given shirts to wear for pictures along with the other teams. As soon as we got back on our boat we were straight to work. I didn’t expect to be doing all this work I thought we’d be on a yacht relaxing but I’d prefer this anyways.

We did quite a lot of moving around and learning how to rig the boat to be ready to sail. We learnt quite a lot on the first day like how ropes can be sheets, lines or halliards. We also learnt how to hoister the main sail and the Yankee.

After that, we then learned how to tack and in my opinion that was the best part we done. From Portsmouth we sailed all the way to Cowes where we arrived at a marina and moored the boat, we packed stuff away and started to prepare dinner which was chicken fajitas.

I was in charge of the chicken and of course, everyone finished it within a second, we sat around the table all together. We then played a game with spoons and cards which was very competitive, I did think I would win but the game was just not fair on me.

We then got into the showers and got ready to sleep. My bunk is at the very top and at first I was quite scared to go in but then after it got easy and I even had a good night sleep, during the night I did wake up a couple times, you can feel the sail slowly rocking cause the water which made me think we were moving however the sleep was not bad at all and I was ready to prepare for a new day ahead.

Overall, I put myself onto so many different tasks to get a try of everything and I enjoyed all of them.