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HM The Queen recently visited Liverpool, accompanied by HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, in order to open the newly built Alder Hey in the Park, Liverpool Exhibition Centre, and the Pullman Liverpool Hotel.

Three of our most senior cadets (AC Devaney, AC Taylor, and C LCpl Mahon) had the privilege of being part of a guard of honour made up of cadets from the Merseyside area, and welcomed The Queen into the town hall upon her arrival. Coming face to face with a figure of such historic significance is something most teenagers would never be able to do, and we are delighted to be able to reward the hard work of our cadets with opportunities such as this.

Despite Thursday evenings usually being reserved for boating, the poor weather this Thursday forced us to call off any water sports. Rather than disappointing our cadets, however, we decided to move our monthly social trip and treat them to a free night in the climbing hangar!

Whilst many of our cadets had done indoor rock climbing before, bouldering without the restrictions of ropes was a new experience that they all really enjoyed. Many thanks to the Climbing Hangar staff for accommodating us on such short notice, and we are looking forward to doing this trip again in the future!

This half term has been a busy one for our unit. For the bank holiday Monday our cadets paid a visit to Crosby Lakeside Adventure Centre, where they had the chance to learn either kayaking or windsurfing. The weather was perfect for watersports, and although the wind didn't pick up until the early afternoon our windsurfers used the morning to ditch their sails and have a go at some stand-up paddleboarding (as well as a fair amount of jumping off of the jetty- pictured). On the other days of the half term our junior boy's rowing team have been hard at work practising for the area level competition, focussing in particular on their boat handling skills.

As well as our unit activities, three of our members of staff have been away all week on an RYA powerboat instructor course, which we are delighted to say that they all passed! This means that for the time ever our unit has instructors in all of the watersport activities currently offered by the Sea Cadets- sailing, windsurfing, kayaking, rowing, and powerboating. This is a fantastic milestone to have reached and opens up a world of training opportunities to our cadets.

Following the success of our unit review last month, we are delighted to report that our unit has been awarded the highest grade possible - a Burgee! This grading reflects the overall performance of our unit, based on various metrics from the past year such as 'average boating qualifications gained per cadet', and is only given to the top 25% of units in the country.

Our unit performed very well across our whole review and one area in which we exceeded expectations was staff qualifications gained, as our staff gained an unprecedented 138 qualifications last year - these included multiple nationally recognised RYA instructor quals that will allow us to give our cadets access to more watersports this year than ever before.

This is the second Burgee that our unit has achieved in the past 20 years, the first being last year, and represents the great strides that we have been making towards providing our cadets with the best experience possible. Thank you to all of our staff for their hard work and tireless dedication, and as always thank you to all of our parents and supporters for making this possible.

Following nights of practice and training, our unit's first trophy of the year was recently won at the Merseyside West District rowing competition. The teams entered this year were open girls, open boys, and junior boys, however due to numbers we were not able to enter a junior girls team. After a bright start to the day the weather quickly turned bad with rain casting a shadow over most of the competition, but this did not put off our cadets whom competed with determination and put up a strong fight every time they raced. After a day of close competition the results were: third place for our open girls, second place for our open boys, and first place for our junior boy's team (pictured) who will now go on to represent our whole district at the area level competition!