As you probably know, I enjoy sailing and I sail every Saturday at a sailing club near me. I am in the UK Cadet Class, and every month or so every cadet in the class meets up at one particular spot for squad training.

On Saturday the 21‌st of January 2017, the cadet sailors all met up in a place called Datchet Water. It was VERY, VERY cold (-6 degrees!) and it wasn’t very windy, which meant we wouldn’t be moving around that much in the boat. My Helm (who is the person in the boat that is charge and steers it) and I went to go change into our drysuits and wetsuits and then we had a briefing with the rest of our squad group. That morning, I also got my squad jacket, which is a really warm jacket with your squad name sewn on the side. They’re really cool and mine will last me for ages because it is so big on me!

We went out on the water after our briefing and I was really cold but had a lot of fun flying the spinnaker and doing some racing exercises.

The next day we went back to Datchet but there was NO WIND at all! It was around 2 knots and the water was completely still, so we didn’t end up sailing all day. Instead, we did some theory in our squad room and some land drills, like spinnaker flying.

Overall I had a really fun time at Datchet Water!