I left for the Spirit of Adventure on 28 February. Ten days, 40 people I had never met before, cramped living space and no showers until the last day – it was amazing. The Spirit experience was one I will never forget. Apart from learning about the ship and how it worked, I met lots of new people. We were separated into four watch groups; Port A, B, Starboard A, B.
Each day we were assigned a sail to control and in the morning we had cleaning stations that went with the particular sail we were on. The watches were rotated each day so that one group didn’t get stuck doing the toilets all the time.
For the first few days the galley was the worst place to be until we got our sea legs. The deck looked like a bomb site, strewn with bodies. The worst ones were harnessed to the side so they could chuck up safely.
The weather warmed up and everyone became used to the rock of the boat. We had training sessions to learn the millions of ropes (I never really got that bit) and played deck games when the weather was no good for sailing. The morning swim was a mission. One morning, the only one when I didn’t procrastinate about jumping in, I and my watch had jumped in and there was a shark in the water. We didn’t know and were calmly told to get out of the water. I jokingly said, ha ha, is there a shark!
The biggest challenge for me was the mast climb. Wearing harnesses we had to climb up the rigging to the top and high-five Jodie, then we had the option of climbing up the last rigging and touching the flagpole. The rigging was one width wide, about one centimetre in diameter and I was barely able to fit my foot on the rope. Then we had to come back down.
All up, the experience was awesome. Any student who has the opportunity to take the plunge should definitely do so.