Sunday

We started the day off with scrambled eggs on toast and after this hearty breakfast we motored over to Brodick to replenish our diminishing food supplies. After walking around CO-OP in lifejackets and sailing gear for 30 minutes we had our shopping and had returned to the boat. We then set off and very soon the sea got very busy! After some sneaky steering between a ferry and a warship the sun came out and after a while of pretty fast sailing the wind began to calm down. Conveniently the boat slowed down to a halt whilst we ate our lunch.


The wind soon picked up and we were off sailing again, amused by Max’s and Ian’s hilarious sarcasm :D For the best part of a day a Merlin submarine hunter had been hovering around The Firth of Clyde and finally we sighted a Norwegian submarine after it appeared to pop up out of nowhere! After taking turns looking at it through the binoculars we were treated to freshly baked, warm soda bread by Annie, Lottie and Mollie. When the bread was finished the helm was then passed over to Madison who managed to get the boat to sail at 7.6 knots! The wind then decided to die down so we put two of the four sails down only for the wind to pick up again. We set off sailing again and then after numerous cups of tea, decided that we would go night-sailing later that evening. We sailed on and when it got to dusk we all had to clip on our safety lines. We enjoyed a delicious bowl of Chorizo pasta before having to quickly tack the boat. We sailed on up Loch Long for a while until we could see the hangar where the nuclear missiles from submarines are serviced in Scotland, shhh... When it became twilight we turned the boat around and started to look and name stars. Ian spotted the first planet, Venus, it was extremely bright and soon after hundreds of stars appeared. After we had had enough of looking at the stars we put the sails down and turned the engine on and started to power on to Holy Lock Marina where we would be able to sleep. It had now turned bitterly cold with no sun to warm us up. We had to keep a sharp eye out for any buoys or moorings so that we didn’t crash into them and after doing some tricky manoeuvres around some moored boats we berthed alongside a pontoon at Holy Lock. After making sure that the ship was securely tied to the pontoon we all had hot drinks and went to bed.

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