50:47.36N 001:7.17W
It was two thirty in the early hours of Friday morning when I finally met
up with the crew of Adventure in a rainy Weymouth harbour. All the crew were in good spirits though
with the usual stories of various people throwing up in and around the
boat. After a couple of hours rest
we set off for Portsmouth and having missed out on two days of training I was
keen to get involved on the boat and to get to know the crew, especially the
guys and girls on Red watch of which I was going to be watch leader!
However thirty minutes into the trip I started to feel
that perhaps red watch had planned some kind of an initiation ceremony for me as
I soon started to feel a little bit queasy!! A couple of minutes later and I was face
over the side of the boat ‘feeding the fish’ much to the amusement of the rest
of my watch who had suffered the same fate the two days before. Luckily for me my sea sickness managed
to last me pretty much the whole day so my trips to the rear quarter of the boat
became a pretty regular sight for the rest of my watch, one such trip came as a
bit of a surprise to me and my oily jacket took the brunt of it much to the
entertainment of the rest of the crew!
That aside we had an excellent day sailing with 40 plus
knots of wind and good size waves to match. We took the evening shift up on deck
which involved sailing the boat dead down wind around the southerly side of the
Isle of Wight and through to Portsmouth before
bringing the boat into Gosport harbour. Although we started the day in the
pouring rain the storm soon passed and the afternoon was clear, cold with 20
foot waves for the boat to surf down.
With the sun setting and the weather calming down due to the shelter of
the island I soon started to feel back on form and having held down a packet of
crisps and half a Snickers bar I felt on top of the world! All the watch managed to learn a few
things throughout the day through various sail changes, night time light and
cardinal identification and finally to A-Z capitals game which took up a good 20
minutes! All in all a good days
training which we will build on tomorrow in preparation for Greenland in the summer.
Rachel
Nicklin
