It's all over.....for now!

Well thats it, sailing is all over for this year. It's quite nice having free weekends again and being able to make plans but Im really going to miss my crew buddies! We had such a laugh and I really hope we can do some more sailing next year.

We've really come together as a team over the last few weeks and although there have been high and low points its definately been one experience I wouldn't change for the world. However, I'm not going to lie, I bloody hated it when we first started out, I couldn't believe I was giving up my only free time to get battered, bruised, thrown around all over the place and, to top it off, shouted at...ALOT! What on earth was I doing? I was literally on the verge of giving it up altogether! After having a good heart to heart with my skipper I decided I would stick it out to the end of the series, this chat followed by a couple of really good weeks and I surprisingly found myself having fun even though I was very much out of my comfort zone.

Having had zero sailing experience I went into this a complete sailing novice and I have had to learn a hell of a lot over the past month.
I have arms like popeye after all the grinding in I have had to endure, I can flake a sail, learnt how important my foulies are, kind of learnt how to tie a bowline (still very much work in progress), I have also roughly learnt where bouys are located in the Solent along with their names (although this will bloody change next year), I discovered that TK Snax in Gosport does the most amazing breakfasts in the history of cafes!!!, and above all else I have learnt to shout back "POLE UP IS OPEN FFS!!"

Something I really need to learn how to understand and brush up on is tides and wind direction....still cant get my head round these.

Our last race was our best yet, finishing just 3 and a half minutes behind the Autumn 2014 Series champs (and our new nemesis!).

Final standings:

 Once racing was over all that was left was for much merriment at the awards ceremony, where although we didnt win any awards for our sailing we managed to pick a couple of winning raffle tickets (which is never a bad thing!)

SO thats it, its all over....well for now anyway, watch this space!