by James Curtis, CCF RAF Cadet Year 12
The school organises and promotes some incredible CCF trips including Nordic Skiing, rock climbing and of course the unforgettable tri-service weekends. However if you're part of the CCF you can also access a phenomenal array of courses that are available to cadets across the county, where the partakers of the courses or expeditions are from all different schools. Just a few out of the many that took my interest include: Sailing, yachting, flying, gliding, shooting, leadership, skiing, rock climbing, mountain biking.
I’ve always been a keen sailor, from an early age I started to sail Optimists from my club of Bosham SC, then I progressed onto Toppers and now I currently sail a Laser Radial. I knew the breadth of courses they had, and one of my ambitions was to become an RYA Day Skipper, a qualification proving your competency on being the skipper on a yacht. Therefore, I started to look through the courses and amazingly found they offered the course from Portsmouth, and being with the CCF it was free.
So in the October half term, I went to Whale Island to meet the yacht and the crew. Whale Island has three CCF yachts, we were on a Hallberg Rassy 49 which was called Bellerophon. There were eight CCF cadets, of which 3 were aiming to do their Day Skipper and 5 who were aiming to do their RYA Competent Crew, and two instructors onboard. The first couple of days were spent training us on safety, mooring, anchoring, leadership skills and of course sailing the yacht! As the week progressed, those doing their Day Skipper, started to learn navigational skills, eventually proving they could do it by executing a successful passage plan, mine being from Cowes to Lymington. We stopped off at Cowes, Lymington and then a night sail back to Portsmouth. All you see of the massive super tankers coming out of Southampton are a few faint red, green and white lights! On the last day, we went onto a smaller 38 foot Sigma Yacht, to practice close quarter manoeuvring, luckily leaving the yacht as well as our egos still intact!
This trip proved to me that there is so much more to CCF than the routine marching of a Monday evening. Everyone has a passion, even if it’s just the case that you haven’t found it yet. The CCF let’s you explore your interest and take it to the next level. I would never have considered the yachting branch of sailing if it hadn't been for this course.
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