Thursday 24 May 2012



 
Read more about Sail Training on board Tenacity of Bolton at http://www.tenacityofbolton.org/

Last days sail (or motor)

One Wednesday night, after a very sea sick day we had curry that was made by Harvey and Ammaar. We then made a chocolate fondue made by Miles and Zack there was chocolate everywhere. Thursday morning we had a quick bowl of cereal then it was off to Piel castle and played manhunt and Zack rugby tackled Miles and they had an argument. After this we went back to the boat Miles and Zack had a best of three rock, paper, scissors and Miles won so Zack was forced to apologise. After this we came back and ate bacon sandwiches. At lunch time we had hot dogs. We motored Tenacity until 2:00PM, and arrived to Glasson Dock. We prepared tea (which is fish & mash) but before we cooked it we each had a ride in the dinghy and we finished our blog. By Zach and Harvey

Wednesday 23 May 2012

Foggy sailing

We rose at 7:30 and prepared the boat for departure and to do so we had to go through a lock gate to get out to sea, the earliest we could do this was 10:00. When we got out to sea things were serious because the fog restricted our view of other boats and objects and also the waves were quite large, this meant we had to be alert. In the second watch we motored very close to the orange cliffs and we even saw some porpoises.Further on the journey we encounter some really big waves hence 3 people felt sea sick. Despite this we did not turn back and this was a good decision as the wind was good enough to go sailing as opposed to motoring the lot. Whilst sailing we reached a magnificent speed of 6 knots, some of the way we got as 3 knots. We had to start using the fog horn which was really annoying as it went of every 2 minutes for over 5 seconds! It was as cold as ice as we saw a massive huddle of birds in our way which just moved before getting crushed. We learned how to gybe the boat (to turn away from the wind). After we finally stopped sailing, we baked some cookies which were 10X better than the meal that followed! Not that the meal was bad it was really good! We entered the Piel Islands Sea and as we came in we saw some lifeboats in the sea which looked like a less serious emergency and just after we saw this we had a bit of trouble with the anchor and we finally got sorted and went for dinner which again Ammaar did not finish at dinner.

Tuesday 22 May 2012

A long days sailing

Monday night When we had our tea we went down to Piel Island to check out the castle. We lowered the dinghy and motored down in two groups to the picturesque island. Once there we saw the ruins of Piel castle we decided it was the perfect place to play manhunt we split into two teams and took turns hunting each other we lost quite badly but we still had great fun at nine O’clock we went back and scrubbed the decks. It was boring until Mark accidently poured a bucket load of water on Ian’s head and Aaron threw his brush into the water where we were anchored. We finished the day with a relaxing game of chase the ace; Ammaar lost, as usual. Tuesday We were woken up at six thirty by the instructors who insisted we get up early to get to our destination on time. We disagreed. We had a quick breakfast of cereal and got dressed and went up to the deck. We were sailing by seven. We had to change our destination to Whitehaven as the sea was literally flat, there wasn’t even a ripple. We spent the day alternating between three things, steering, sleeping, and watching the hundreds of wind turbines that passed. We later saw a colony of seals and even a porpoise. We docked at Whitehaven after eight hours sailing. We got a long needed shower and chilled out before eating a beautiful dinner of stir fry pork, overlooking the boats in the harbour.

Monday 21 May 2012

Sunday and Monday

On Sunday everyone arrived early as they were very excited except Aaron who wanted to be the odd one out, we received a warm welcome from all the staff and our parents got too look around the boat. We had a quick briefing and were straight in by cutting onions and potatoes, because of the onions our first day was already emotional, everyone thought we were crying because of our parents how wrong they were. We had bangers and mash for tea and it was actually really nice even though it had a few tear drops in it. We were already very noisy and were told to be quiet on many occasions, we were in bed by 10 and my dorm was asleep by 11. Even though everyone was shattered Mark woke everyone up to ask the time, we were meant to get up at 7 but Mark woke us up 6 we were not pleased. On Monday we were all up by 7:10 and were getting ready for the showers. While one room did the breakfast others went to have probably their only shower until Thursday. We then had to fill the boats with fuel so we were taught new knots and how to help park a boat onto a fuelling station. After we left, we went to the lock where the water was drained for us and we could get on to the estuary. While the others sat on deck steering out of the estuary, my dorm made ham and tuna mayo sandwiches, after we had eaten some biscuits and learned about the boat we were motoring down river Lune at about 12:30 we ate our sandwiches with some fruit. After we encountered some big cargo ships we all took shifts in taking care of the sails. At about 1:00 we had all our sails out and flying through the sea in the hot sun. By the time we started to slow down it was because we were getting close to Piel Island. We took down the sails and motored in. As we got very close we spotted some seagulls and then a small colony of Seals. Then anchored just off the castle, we had a very spicy chilli con carne which definitely woke everyone up. After dinner we are going to visit the castle.