Page 14 - The Light Blue Volunteer Journal 2021

Sailing on the Solent
Our week of sailing on the Solent started with a night of preparations at the ARC in Cambridge before setting
off to Gosport in the early hours of August 23rd. Once arriving at Gosport, we received a run through of life jacket safety and received our wet kit and food before getting a tour of our boats and going through an itinerary of what’s on board. This really helped with getting to grips with what everything on board did and how everything runs.
In no time at all we had everything packed on board and were off on
the Solent towards our first stop of Southampton Town Quay Marina. Within hours of being on board we had already learnt the basics of rigging, rope tying and were even getting to grips with some steering. We learnt about setting up the sails dependant on the weather and how to prepare a ship for mooring before sitting down for dinner on board whilst watching the sunset to wrap up the perfect first day of sailing.
After a much needed rest we were up again the morning to prepare the boat for the next day of sailing and to practise
some rope work for tying sails and
buoys in different ways. We had another great day of sailing on the Solent from Southampton to Lymington where we got the chance to do more steering, get to grips with understanding wind direction and how it affects course plotting and tacking to manoeuvre a boat.
The rest of the week we continued to build our knowledge and skills of what we had already learnt over the first couple of days whilst also practising man overboard drills and anchoring as well as getting to experience sailing at night to allow us to get a feel for how different it can be and understand the different ways of signalling possible hazards via lights.
After 5 days of gorgeous weather and great sailing around the South of England we headed back to Gosport on our final trip of the week where we received our competent crew course certificates for completing the week before driving back up to Cambridge to wrap up a perfect week at sea.
OCdt Geelan
14 THE LIGHT BLUE VOLUNTEER