Room 8’s Sailing Journey
March 12, 2024
A once in a lifetime experience for me at the Akarana Yacht Club which is in Okahu Bay! Excitement fills me as I take one step onto the pavement. I looked around and saw tons and tons of boats. It seemed impossible to count since I didn’t have a clear view of them all.
We waited in the sidelines until Kim, from New Navigators, approached us and took us to our classroom for the day. We went through briefings on safety and clothing until it was time for the fun part.
Down at the water’s edge we grabbed small trailers that carried the Quest boats with our coaches Nico and Lola. We had 4 coaches to be exact, their names were Nico, Hattie, Jake and Lola. Continuing where we were; we pulled our boats down the ramps, placing them close to the water and sliding them into the water. We hopped onto the Quests which felt slippery at first but it was slowly easier to manoeuvre around in.
Our coach Nico sailed us away from the dock slowly moving us away from the shore, until showing us a Xshot water gun underneath a small black tarp. I filled it up while Nico sailed us closer to another Quest boat which had I think handheld water cannons which were small like a tube but had great fire power not as strong as a real one tho. We clashed for four or five rounds until we went towards the Optimist dinghies, there were three of them but they barely had anything to fight us so we went for tons and tons of runs until our time was up and we had to switch with their boats. It was difficult to control it at first but it was getting easier by the second with the help of teamwork, a few minutes or maybe fifteen or ten we were told to hook onto the speedboat which had Hattie manning it. We gathered the other two dinghies and hooked onto each other using ropes until we sped around the quests which had the other group in each of them, we passed around and around making many rounds. After that we stopped and straightened up but suddenly the optimist tilted from the weight being shifted, which caused the boat to take on a bunch of water. It was really cold to be honest, I was freezing as soon as I made contact with the water. After all that fun we went back to shore and relaxed.
