The day we saw seals

Today we had an early start at about seven am but some of us were up earlier, because of a fishing boat that shone a light on us and rocked the boat. After we were breakfasted and ready we set off in the dinghy to Peel Island where we were greeted by three dogs. Soon the owner came out and two of the dogs went to him because they were older and better. Whereas Yogi the young Newfoundland pup stayed with us the whole time. Then the owner said they could come along with us. Later we found out he was the king of Peel Island. We walked around Peel Island because it was only small. Later we met the Queen of the island as well. Soon we set off sailing and we saw seals through the binoculars. The weather was very nice so we reached Glasson dock with no problems or seasickness. The food was very nice today especially the lunch that Ian our skipper made for us. But we have a massive problem on the boat since three of Alfie Britten’s chocolate bars are missing so we are going to have to try to find them.
But all in all we are well
Ben L and Tom P

Tom and Alfies day

We started off the day with cereals followed by Sausage and Bacon butties. We then split into groups for one of two activities, dinghy driving around Fleetwood harbour or passage planning with Ian (the skipper). I, Alfie the one typing, went dinghy driving and we had a fantastic time. It was quite comical and occasionally repulsive, especially when Mitchell took the wheel! He was literally petrified he went pale and kept biting his lip! But after 10 minutes he got the hang of it and calmed down at which point his driving improved dramatically. In my time behind the wheel I decided to drive to the fisherman’s end of the harbour. A decision I greatly regret, if this not been made apparent in previous blogs Fleetwood fish dock is rather smelly. As we approached our nostrils were filled with the stench of putrid fish corpses rotting away in thick slimy water. We saw the boats ridden with decay and let’s say quite dirty. When we were told by James that a lot of the fish we eat will come from these boats and/or places like this a lot of people suddenly began to dislike fish. Guess what’s for tea tonight… FISH! After this we had our somewhat mad hour in which we dance madly to Radio 1 in the stern of the boat just before we left. Then we departed for Piel island. We got through the lock in no time and we were out on open sea. A jet boat passed us which literally leapt out of the water at such speeds that we gawked at it for at least 5 minutes. When we got to open water we all decided to go right to the bow when the sea was at its choppiest. We literally were bounced up and then had a pause in which we felt weightless and then we plummeted down and got drenched. A really fun experience, which we were told to stop because the waves were growing in size. At this point I became quite sea sick. We switched off the motor after a while and sailed solely on the winds power with 3 sails without any engines although this began to tip the boat which became a problem for some of us causing Tom Wright to be sick over the side. After 4 hours of sailing we managed to reach Piel island where we couldn’t create lay the anchor as the winch decided to give up but after a lot of elbow grease the skipper and mate managed to fix it (after a lot of fiddling about with the fuse box that is!).
We are hoping that we should manage to get the dinghy over to Piel islands to-morrow. See to-morrows blog for the story!
Tom B and Alfie.

To sea, well..... just.

Today we have just sailed from Glasson Dock to Fleetwood Marina. As we sailed into the sea we finally got the Irish Sea spray in our faces. Most of us had a go at steering and it was really great. During the rigorous voyage Reece Walker was a bit seasick because of the movement of the bow of the ship. As we arrived at Fleetwood Marina we were greeted by a jetty of bird droppings.
We went to visit the outlet shopping centre and on the way we encountered a “dead” seagull and decided to throw rocks at it. At the shopping centre there was a variety of shops including the most indulgent of chocolate shops, the Thornton’s shop and the Cadbury’s shop. Whilst we were shopping Ian our skipper decided to cook chicken curry for tea with a delicious bowl of hot, steaming chocolate fondue for dessert. Along with our curry we had some onion barges and naan bread.
We are really enjoying it so far and can’t wait to see where the Tenacity of Bolton takes us next.
By Tom W and Ben S.

Mitchell and Reece,s day

After getting up at 7 30 we ate a delicious breakfast made by the bow watch. After this we got kitted out with our oil skins (waterproof jacket and pants) and a life jacket. We got ready to sail out around the marina, this was exciting although it was disappointing when we found out we wouldn’t be able to go out of the lock gate due to a misunderstanding between the lock keepers and our amazing crew. During the tour of the marina we (Reece and Mitchell) made immense cheese and ham butties. After moving on from the disappointment we decided to change to the boats dinghy with an outboard and raced it around the marina. Unfortunately we decided to let Reece drive and he nearly capsized the dinghy. After a 20 minute drive around the lake we got back on board the Tenacity. Whilst back on board we learnt how to pull out the sails and how to tie a clove hitch, whilst the bow watch started to make our tea. Later we all decided to go on a walk around the local park and had fun on the swings and see saw. On the way back we met some cows and a horse that we called Beefy. Overall it has been great so far.


Mitchell and Reece

Map of Autumn 2010 trip 2

A Goodnight Sail, by Felix

I pulled on my balaclava as there was a very long and cold night ahead. We set off from Piel Island by pulling up the anchor from the seabed and hitting around 7 knots down the moonlit channel.

We had a fantastic view of Blackpool lights from the channel and could clearly see Blackpool Tower looming over all the ant-sized buildings around it.

It was soon extremely cold and we were sipping our mugs of hot juice and guarding them as if they were valuable treasure found on a dangerous quest.

We finished our exciting journey at around midnight and we were all soon safely asleep, dreaming about our adventures for the next day.

Thursday 23rd September

Hello. We have had a great day today. We are all safe, clean and best of all nobody was sea sick (yet).

We have started our journey South today and have left Whitehaven bound for Piel Island, the wind has been light so most of the day has been spent motoring and the sea has gradually got calmer.

A quite odd thing happened today as we were sailing along the coast we were stopped by a man in a boat marked range safety who told us to stop because we were about to drive into a naval defense firing range who where in the process of firing at the sea, so we had to wait for 15 minutes until the barrage stopped. During that wait Colin was cooking up a storm in the kitchen with the results being the most delicious cookies. Then we continued our sail back to Piell Island. All in all we traveled over 40 miles in 8 hours on our way back to peil. When we arrived we saw seals and we think we saw a porpoise. And soon, due to a poor forecast for tomorrow, we will set sail for Glasson at night.

Ethan and John

Early start on Wednesday 22nd September 2010

Early start this morning, getting up at 5:30. Everybody looked tired and we all felt it. We set off at 6:00, wasting no time. Having done 17.49miles yesterday, we now had to do 40miles to get to Whitehaven where we were mooring up for the night. Bacon butty for breakfast. It wasn’t long until Myles was sick again, followed by lots of others, including Nick, Jackson, Sam, and me, Curtis. Everyone was asleep except for Ethan and Ed. During the trip we had to get the sail outs like we were shown on Monday. The wind was not very strong so we had to use the engine and sails at some points.

Got to Whitehaven at 12:40 and moored up for the night.

After lunch of jacket potatoes with beans, cheese,and tuna we went for a walk to the old lighthouse, after which we all had our showers.

It was the bow watch to prepare dinner tonight which is fish and chips. Wecut up the chips and they are now cooking in the pan and we are really hungry but fine. See you!



By Curtis and Ed!

21st September Glasson - Piel Island

The morning started at a very acceptable time of 7.00 when we were awoken by Ian, we had a cereal breakfast to start with and then prepared the boat for a day at sea, packing all our kit away and getting into our waterproofs and lifejackets before slipping away from our berth at Glasson and going into the lock gates on the other side of the basin.

Being an entirely manual affair we had plenty of time to prepare and eat sausage butties while the two lock-keepers closed the gates and emptied the lock so that we could enter into the lower basin. As we were quite early into the bottom basin we had a good half hour’s wait until the sea lock came down and we sailed out into the river.
To start with we followed the red and green bouys down the river until we reached the Lune Cardinal (a black and yellow bouy), then we started sailing as the wind picked up. For a short while we sailed along nicely and had our lunch on deck but then gradually the sea got choppy, Nick was sick following a brief spell of quesyness and Myles copied shortly after. Nick appeared to be much improved following his bout of sickness but while asking for a cup of water and was sick again all over the cockpit and managed to refill his just emptied water glass.

On the way into Piel Island we passed a windfarm and anchored at the moorings just off the Castle as shown on the map below. We got the dinghy down and then went and explored the castle but Nick, John and Sam found the tiny (??) run down castle not to their tastes and went with Colin to explore the seal colony just south of the Castle. Later we had Turkey Korma followed by Apple Crumble and custard, by which time Nick had read his first book all safe and well.

Tomorrow looks like being an early start as we head up to Whitehaven.

Nick and Jackson

Monday

Sam and Myles’s Blog
Everything is safe (for now!) for everyone onboard. We have settled in and are now making this more like our home for the next couple of days. Everyone is enjoying it. We have been given some waterproof pants & waterproof tops. We have also been given a lifejacket and had a quick briefing on what it has and what to do. The skipper has showed us all the safety it has and how it works. We spent all morning going through the safety aspects of the journey. Today we did a lot of things including; learning how to drive the R. I. B. (the Ridged Inflatable Boat), learn to get the sails out, learn how to do bowline, practice to park the boat, everyone walked to the lock to see what will happen and how it works, went to the park for a couple of minutes and (unluckily for me) get woken up by swans attacking my window at 4:30am. But without a doubt the best bit is definitely the food, which bow group made. We are split into two groups, bow and stern. The majority is in stern, tomorrow stern do breakfast and tea and bow do lunch.

Sunday Night

Everyone is happy and well on board and starting to get themselves sorted for the adventure ahead. Unfortunatly the rain has just arrived again!

Autumn 2010 Year 8 Trip 1