Year 9 

Year 9 Sailing Camp

On Monday 18th June, we left school at about 7:36 am drove to Wallan, had a quick break then we got back on the road to continue our journey to Geelong.  We arrived in Geelong at about 11:30 where we were introduced to our instructors who showed us our planned course for our sailing session after lunch, as well as how to look at the wind and weather.  For some of us this refreshed our prior knowledge from completing the work during class.

After lunch we got ready for our sailing trip. The preparation included getting into some wet suits, a waterproof jacket and a life jacket. Once we had ourselves ready for the sailing session we had to get the boats ready for the sailing trip. Getting the boats included taking them down to the beach and listening to our instructors about how to rig up the boats. This process included the instructor showing us how to do a step and then us going back to our boats and doing the step ourselves.

Now that our boats are all rigged up we are ready to go sailing, or so we thought. Dave (the instructor) suggested that we might need to put the boats in the water to then go sailing. So now we all had to step into the really freezing cold water, take the boats off the trailer and wait in the really cold water, while Dave got his power boat ready so that if we got stuck he could come quickly and help us out. Now that Dave was ready we slowly one by one started sailing out with the very little wind that we had.

Tuesday, we left our caravan park at 8:30 am, we arrived at the sailing school and sat through a quick briefing of what we were going to be doing today then we started yesterday’s process again which was getting changed into the clothes that we needed to wear while we were sailing. We rigged the boats again by ourselves this time. Once the boats were rigged up we went through same process of waiting in the freezing cold water again until Dave was ready with the safety boat. But instead of sailing  we did more of a canoeing trip because there was very little to no wind. After we finished we spent 1:30 hrs at Westfield shopping centre walking around and looking for some cheap, interesting and useful items. After this interesting shopping trip, we walked back to the bus then drove back to the caravan park where we were staying, then we all started cooking our very healthy and nutritious meals (I wish) the meals ranged from micro wave meals to some fresh salad, frozen vegies and sausages.

Wednesday, we all woke up very reluctantly as it was about -1 degrees, but we were all persistent young people and pushed through this minor hurdle. Besides, when we got to the sailing school again for our last sailing session we had bigger issues, there was very little wind. Which meant once again we were paddling and not sailing. We once again rigged up our boats and stood in the very cold water waiting for Dave to get the safety boat. Once Dave was insight we went through the same process as the previous days. When we got out of the bay we had some wind finally blow through the sails which meant that we got to do some actual sailing rather than canoeing in sail boats. The opportunity arose for some capsizing to occur today but unfortunately everyone except for one very willing student wanted to get their feet wet, because we were not used to the very cold temperatures that we had experienced on the bay. After a slow sail/paddle into the beach we were all relieved to hop into some nice warm showers.

Once we were all defrosted and warmed up we hopped on to the bus ready for our long 3.5 hr drive and bus ride home which was quieter than the ride to Geelong, but it was still a very lively ride because we were all excited to get home and sleep in our own beds.

By: Ben Okely