56 hours is a long time when you spend most of it awake, as the group of 8 Artemis Academy hopefuls were soon to find out. The first day of the selection trials were spent at Wokefield Park, were there are some great ropes courses to test your mettle on.
After a long day there, the candidates were unwittingly driven to the RNLI centre in Poole, for a very realistic sea survival session in a swimming pool. I got to take part, donning yellow wellies, foulies, and a pretty nifty helmet- the lining inside can be inflated so that it fits perfectly around your head! The first thing we had to do was jump into the swimming pool and swim 2 lengths, without a lifejacket. After convincing myself that I was going to come back to the surface, I took the leap; and soon realized just how terrifying falling in to the Ocean must be.
It was impossible to swim without also drinking what felt like gallons of water, and after losing a welly half way across, I really thought I was going to need some help if I wasn't going to follow suit.
The next stage was jumping off the diving board with the lights off, wave machine on, and John Thorn standing on the side holding a hose, which I suspect was set at full blast. After the plunge it was liferaft drills; setting it the right way up and climbing in. Although it was a 10 man liferaft, it was full to the brim with us all crammed in and lifejackets inflated to the max. I kept thinking of Steve Callahan's book about drifting around in one of these things for 76 days. After just 40 minutes I had some idea of what it must have been like; wet, wobbly, most of the time pretty scary. Quite an amazing feat to survive for that long, where your world is nothing more than a floating rubber ring.
Needless to say I learnt a lot from the experience, and welcomed the warm room at Portland House once we had got to the Weymouth and Portland Sailing Academy. So it was a rest for me, while the candidates spent the night building plywood boats...
Glorious sunshine greeted us the next morning, and a good breeze for the candidates to test their sailing skill the Figaros. I was on RIB duty, zooming around the place while Antony the photographer worked hard at getting some good shots of the guys pulling ropes, and slick racing moves. Finishing the day on the water at 6pm, in just a few hours time they were out again, casting off not Figaros but their own plywood creations. This had me darting around between the pontoons, on rescue & camera duty. With another breezy day I couldn't wait to get out again, on my own, for the sail back to Southampton!
After a long day there, the candidates were unwittingly driven to the RNLI centre in Poole, for a very realistic sea survival session in a swimming pool. I got to take part, donning yellow wellies, foulies, and a pretty nifty helmet- the lining inside can be inflated so that it fits perfectly around your head! The first thing we had to do was jump into the swimming pool and swim 2 lengths, without a lifejacket. After convincing myself that I was going to come back to the surface, I took the leap; and soon realized just how terrifying falling in to the Ocean must be.
Needless to say I learnt a lot from the experience, and welcomed the warm room at Portland House once we had got to the Weymouth and Portland Sailing Academy. So it was a rest for me, while the candidates spent the night building plywood boats...