Day 2 - The adventure beginnings...

After a lovely evening of stargazing spotting wonders such as Venus, Mars and Aldebaran, we finally settled down to our first night at sea. Despite being shattered, everyone but Jess was woken up by the large waves at 3am, due to the wind changing direction for a short time. Not everyone was best pleased, as we preferred being gently rocked to sleep by the sea. We were woken up at half six by Max getting his cup of tea and this led to a slow start as expected....we’re not an early morning crew, but we think that may have to change as the week goes on! Breakfast was quiet and we then decided to start on the most important thing of the whole trip, food. We chose our menus for our expedition on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday (pleased be impressed as we are planning on making almost everything from scratch...this includes the bread, soup and cakes. But don’t get any ideas for when we arrive home).

Next we needed to look at the charts, work out where we are and start thinking about how we were going to work out where to take the boat and what we were going to do over the week. Even using the charts does not appear as simple as it could. There is so much for us to learn...The next thing on our ‘to do’ list was to plan a route. We all quickly learnt how to decide upon a route; taking into consideration factors such as the wind and tide, listening to the weather forecast and hearing what the wind was going to do for the day and how this would affect our sailing.

Despite the sleepy eyes, we then went on to learn how to log our positions and this became Jess’ favourite thing as it involved not being amongst the elements on deck. We started to realise that we would all find a job that was to become our favourite on the boat. After a relatively lazy morning, we slipped into our oilies (fancy sailing word for waterproofs) and were on our way! As we sailed all the way around Great Cumbrae, we are pleased to announce that it is now ours! We thought that if once upon a time, if the Vikings could claim land for their own, then why couldn’t we...? We have reached our aim of anchoring at Rothesay Bay after successfully learning more about how to run the boat along the way...a busy trip. We started off with safety drills and a man over board (with a buoy, don’t get too worried). And then started to loom at using the boat more...All four sails had their debut of the trip and it was a special and proud moment! We are also able to recall the names of them (Dawn will love this name dropping): Main sail, Jib, Mizzen and Staysail. Jess, Paloma and Ellie took the helm over the course of the day and got us to our destination without moving off course. We were also able to enjoy wildlife along the way including porpoises and swans at a close proximity.

Upon arrival at Rothesay Bay, we found a suitable location to drop our anchor. We’d just like to say how fabulous a ‘waggler’ Humairaa was. We were officially anchored and could start to lower the dingy to head off shopping. Little did we know that there were two Co-Ops in the area, and of course, we chose the wrong one that was smaller, good start. However, it was great to find that there was everything we needed in this well kitted out village shop. The Co-Op staff were very surprised by our attire and the look on the check out lady’s face when she had to scan 6 brimming baskets of food was golden...but we feel we did a brilliant job of getting together all the provisions we will need for our expedition. Tea was caramelised pork chops with vegetable stir fry and rice which filled us all up, including Jess (first for everything!). Preparation for tea was a full group effort as all crew had a hand it getting some part of this meal ready. We are now all on task for getting ready for bed with Ellie manning up and cleaning the bathroom (we owe you big time), and everyone else helping to get the galley and the rest of the boat ship shape. We do think we will all sleep well this evening...

We hope tomorrow will be just as eventful as today, we are looking forward to sailing, and to finding the day a little easier now we are starting to learn the ropes.

Tune in tomorrow for the next instalment of our expedition...

Love from

Jess and Maddie and the rest of the team