Strong friendships and bonds
We recently funded a voyage for a group of students from East Norfolk Sixth Form College to sail across to Belgium and The Netherlands and back to Lowestoft. As you can see in the wonderful voyage report below it achieved everything that we hope will be achieved when we award a grant. As we always say here at The Norfolk Boat, it’s not just about the sailing…
10 EN students and 2 staff embarked on their sailing adventure from Lowestoft on June 26th, making the North Sea crossing over to Den Helder in the Netherlands. The staff had not been sailing before so this was a real challenge for them as well as the students.
On the way, students worked in shifts to navigate, steer, operate the sails and keep watch, as well as cooking for each other and keeping the deck and living quarters clean and tidy. The first day’s sail took them past lots of wind farms and across big shipping lanes, as well as through an epic thunderstorm overnight. When in Den Helder, students were able to explore the local area as well as learn more about the workings of the boat and its history. Some brave sailors climbed the rigging too!
On the return journey, they put this extra training into practice, following the skipper’s instructions without needing to be shown what to do. The ship’s crew were impressed with the progress made, and praised EN students for their teamwork and willingness to join in. It was particularly good to see such strong friendships and bonds developing between the students as they helped each other and enjoyed each other’s company on and off-watch.
One parent commented, “thank you so much for organising the trip. My son thoroughly enjoyed the sailing and working the different areas of the ship, learning new skills. He said the crew were so friendly, supportive and found the whole experience amazing. So thank you so much for creating this opportunity for him.” It was extra special for EN as one of the crew members was also a student, who had been volunteering with the trust for some time, and has enjoyed it so much that she is going to train to work on superyachts in September. Two more students from the group are also planning to start volunteering with the Trust following their experiences on the trip.
