Our voyage began at the crew meeting in the Jack O’ Newbury. Our skipper, Michael, first tacked to the Three Frogs then quickly hopped over to the Jack O’ Newbury and within seconds we were gelled into the most marvellous team ever to embark on the John Mountain Challenge. Unfortunately Jack couldn’t make the meeting but made up for it with passionate and enthusiastic emails and probably the best walnut cake in the Solent courtesy of Mrs Jack.

Friday was an outstanding success. The highlight was our adjudicator Alex not quite managing to reach her tipping point. However by 0130 Saturday everyone else had reached theirs.

Saturday followed Friday’s lack of wind. Most being generated by the men on board.

We got off the pontoon flawlessly and quickly got on to our tasks of the day. One of the highlights being our discovery that al dente spaghetti is perfect for tying bowlines and we were pleased that we had 5’ 8’’ Alex rather than 6’+ Peter as our adjudicator (who says size isn’t important). The day was punctuated with Lee staggering on deck with a severe head injury having been hit by the boom. The crew sprang into action attending to the casualty as a priority. Having been bandaged he was fully revived by a very special kiss from the mate Julie (maybe this should be added to the first aid manual).

Before we knew it we were enveloped in fog and had to use our super skipper Michael’s mathematical genius and Lianne’s perfect steering to get us safely to Newtown Creek without the use of a log reading.

The day was rounded off by a two handed crew doing a rather fast hand brake turn and bringing us safely to a perfect stop and a port side mooring on pontoon V19 in Yarmouth.

And a perfect end to a perfect day – a beer for the boys, some bubbles for the ladies and a great dinner in the Royal Solent yacht club. Now for tomorrow…