Whitstable Yacht Club - News - Cadets Cruise To Seasalter And Back Report

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Cadets Cruise to Seasalter and back - Report

Posted: Monday, 22 August, 2016

Force: 3-5
North-East wind

On Thursday the 18th of August, the Whitstable Yacht Club Cadets went on a cruise to Seasalter Sailing Club and back! We had twenty-two sailors in total and twenty-seven people including those on the safety boats.
We launched around eleven o clock on a beautiful sunny day and headed halfway to Sheppey so we could sail down to Seasalter.

As we got further out it got rougher because of the sea breeze, we tacked or gybed and were surfing the waves all the way down! Unluckily some of the toppers nosedived and a lot of boats capsized, but luckily nothing too major!
After about forty-five minutes of sailing of exhilarating sailing we got there! We beached extremely quickly and had a bit of trouble getting in because of the rough waves and strong wind.
Everyone at Seasalter Sailing Club were very welcoming and we were very grateful for them helping us get the boats in. We all warmed up and ate our picnic lunches!

After saying our thankyou’s to the Seasalter crew, and as high tide turned we set off back to Whitstable. We had a few changes in boat crews and couple of tows as the seabreeze made the journey back a bit more challenging. Smurf kindly appeared with another safety boat to make it safer for us on the way back.
Everyone made it back to Whitstable, happy and safe and all had a jolly good sail in Swallows and Amazons style!

Many thanks to Richard Maltby, Wendy, Ian Embry, Paul Mcnally, and Andy and Fiona Clarke in Smurf for their support and organisation. Thanks to our friends of Seasalter SC for their warm reception, hospitality and support in landing and launching our boats! It was a great time and everyone enjoyed it. We can’t wait for the next cadet cruise!
Finally a special thank you to all the cadets who sailed on Friday the 19th August during the RYA inspection and to Richard Maltby for his dedicated work in contributing hugely to gaining our RYA certificate, which we passed with flying colours!
Report by Toby Sellar, photos by Wendy Fitzpatrick.