Two of our younger members: Daniel Johnson and David Gardner, sailed with the Ocean Youth Trust on their ketch the Greater Manchester Challenge. This is Daniel's account of their voyage.
Day 1 We climbed aboard ship at 4:00, we were greeted by the crew and shown where to put our bags and where are bunks were, I approached the bed and the first thing that I thought was small, the beds were approximately 60 cm wide, 2 metres long and about 40cm high. As Dave got to our bunks first he chose the bottom bunk, which was open, so I got the short straw and got the top bunk. The first day we were just getting to know each other and getting to know the crew. We were all divided up into two different watches, Jenny's watch and John's watch. I was put into Jenny's watch and we were told about health and safety aboard the 76ft ketch while the other watch (John's watch) were shown about on deck and shown how to coil ropes etc. We were also shown how to clip onto the jackstays. Later that night we were given our waterproofs and our life jackets which we kept all the trip. After we were issued with our waterproofs and our lifejacket, we were made to put them on and walk around in them to get used to them. We were all surprised when we were told that we had to go to bed at 10:30 but none of us did! We all got into trouble and they decided to let us stay up a bit later.
Day 2 We were awoken at 6:15 am by someone's alarm, the crew were not happy in the slightest because we were not supposed to get up until 7:00 am. The first morning we were shown the rota for cooking. At 8:00 am we set off on a sail to Port Erin, which took us 12 hours, this was divided into 3 hour shifts between the two watches. When on watch we had to maintain the sails and watch out for other objects even though we had radar. When on watch, we were taught how to helm the ship using the sails, the compass and the clouds. On this trip everyone was sick including the crew except for Dave and myself. We arrived at Port Erin at about 9:00 pm and were told that, because we were anchored, we needed to do anchor watch which consisted of getting up in the middle of the night to sit in the cold darkness. Dave and myself were awarded the noisiest people.
Day 3 We woke up at 8:00am; we were given a sleep in. We got ready, put our waterproofs on and our lifejackets, and were ready to go by 9:00am We began another journey to Port Douglas which took us 6 hours and on which everyone was sick on except for once again myself and Dave. We arrived at Port Douglas at 6:00pm and were all allowed ashore to explore the Isle of Man, so we walked around the town for a bit and got bored so we went back. We were all happy tonight because we were allowed to stay up until 10:30pm but were allowed to talk until 11:00pm.
Day 4 We were made to clean the boat from top to bottom including the heads, which no one was keen on. Today we had our first shower, which everyone needed because we all stunk. I spent most of this day in the Sea Cat's waiting area because my friend Laurence was on the verge of going home because he had had enough, also it was raining. I texted my mum which cost me 50p so she didn't get another text, But I did ring her.
Day 5 We set off home on a 14-hour journey, which everyone thought was a drag but it had to be done so we could get home. So we set off at 8:00am which was supposed to get us back at 10:00pm. The time came and the crew kept adding hours on, so we thought something was a bit suspicious. I thought 'I am cold and tired I am going to bed', which I did along with about 5 other people.
We got to bed at about 12:30pm and were woken up at about 6:30am by the sound of the VHF. The skipper was talking to the Coastguard, and all I heard was that we couldn't sail or motor and we had an injured person onboard. At this myself and Dave both went on deck to find out what had happened: one of the crew had been sailing all day and night and was on the verge of hypothermia, the Mizzen's eye had come out of the sail and the engine wasn't taking diesel from one of the tanks, so we had stopped dead and we had been fighting to stay were we were for 6hours.
The Coastguard radioed us back and said the lifeboat would be there in 30 minuites. 10 minuites later the lifeboat was next to us and had taken control of Greater ManchesterChallenge and were pulling us back into Holyhead. It took the life boat about 1 ½ hours to tow us back into Holyhead Marina. When we got into the marina we had to clean the boat from top to bottom again and we were all presented with a certificate and we got our logbooks signed. I was presented with 2 birthday cards off the crew and my friend Laurence and the voyage was finished.