Sunday, January 12, 2014

Ahoy me hearties!!

Joshua has had an awesome year or reading sailing books. He read the 12 books in the Arthur Ransome series - Swallows and Amazons. That was a book my Grandfather had read to my mum when she was little (I think)... I never read it when I was young, but remember my mum recommending it to me.

It was the beginning of a desire for Joshua to learn to sail. He has also read the 12 books in the CS Forester series about Horatio Hornblower which is historical fiction set in the Napoleonic wars. He has also read Kidnapped, Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island, the first 2 books of the Imaginarium Geographica chronicles, and the Temeraire series.

With us moving it has taken a while to get him enrolled in a sailing club, but today, he finally had his first sailing lesson. Joseph also is learning to sail. First they had to learn to capsize the boats on land, then in shallow water and then in the deep water. After that... they were sailing. They were pretty lucky... there were meant to be 8 in their class with only 6 boats between them, but only Joshua, Joseph and 1 other child turned up, so they pretty much had a private lesson.

Joshua did very well the teacher was impressed with something he could do... something to do with changing hands... which she said her kids who have been sailing since October are only just learning how to do that... maybe sailing is going to be his sport. He was certainly very excited, when I checked in on him at 9pm last night he was wide awake as he was too excited to sleep, and at 10.30pm he was still excited thinking about sailing.

He was so happy afterwards... He loved it.

The teacher gave us forms and told us to fill them out if we wanted to carry on with the lessons. Tane and I just looked at each other and said, 'yes, we'll definately carry on'. We asked Joshua if it was harder than he expected... He said 'Yes, harder, but more fun!'

Joseph did well for his first lesson... he had a bit of trouble with the turning at first and capsized 3 times in a row, but then was up and running like his big brother.




Tane, Anna and Ella got to go for a ride in he motorboat, so they had a fun time too... and they all had a swim in the river in the end as well.