Thanks from Sewell Park Academy
From the students
We would like to say thank you for giving us the opportunity to take part in this life changing experience. Without your support this would not have been possible.
We went into the voyage excited for the experience ahead, and came away exhausted! Despite that, we all had an amazing time gaining new skills and challenging ourselves for the seven days we were on board. the most important skill was to really make an effort to work collectively as a team, to divide up the hard work running a boat comes with.
The voyage also helped us gain some independence and initiative skills, as we were essentially running the boat ourselves and making our own decisions. It really showed us our own potential and skills that we all have, as well as showing us how hard some areas of running a boat can be. My favourite moment personally was cooking and prepping the meals, as I didn’t have much culinary skill going into the boat, but I came away feeling much more confident with my cooking skills and tried many new things!
I would really recommend the voyage to anyone who wants to improve their teamwork and independence skills, and get a really good experience of living on a boat. It was a real eye opener as it showed me how interesting and different life on a boat is, and the different skills required to make it work (although, my boat steering skills weren’t the sharpest).
We would all like to say a massive thank you to the three crew members on board, Ed, Pippa & Charlotte, as they were excellent characters and really brought out our potential. Thank you for giving us such a good experience that we will all remember, we all came away feeling incredibly happy with the voyage and what it has taught us 🙂
From the teacher
This year’s voyage was a huge success – smoother waters combining more challenging temperatures really pushed our sailors to their limits with many showing great examples of resilience and hard-work. The high expectations of the crew facilitated this and everyone at Sewell Park would like to place on record our sincere gratitude to the Cirdan Trust and their crew for facilitating such a memorable trip.
Students are already asking to go next year and it is clear that this is an opportunity our young people relish. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank The Norfolk Boat for the charitable support – without grants like yours we wouldn’t be able to run such a rewarding trip for some of our most disadvantaged students.
