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This weekend the sun was out, the Albert Dock was bustling, and our unit's marching band was invited once again to perform at the International Mersey River Festival. Throughout the weekend our band did numerous performances for the public outside of the Maritime Museum, as well as providing music to welcome the Warrington unit field gun crew. In their down time our cadets had the perfect opportunity to explore the many attractions of the festival including live music and exotic food stalls, as well as being able to enjoy some of the more unconventional things the festival had to offer such as the human sized bees that could be seen buzzing about and the talking flower pot men...

Following an excellent performance at our recent RNP inspection our unit has been awarded the highest available award for overall performance, the burgee. Achieving this burgee represents a significant milestone for our unit as it is the first one we have achieved since we changed names to South Liverpool Sea Cadets quite a number of years ago, and represents the culmination of all of the improvements we have been making year on year to become the unit we are today. As you might expect we were very excited to receive this news and to signify this we gave the cadets a night off from their training, instead letting them eat cake and snacks and celebrate the fact that all of their hard work over the past year has paid off.

Last night a group of our cadets were delighted to be given a tour of the helicopter exhibition at Altcar Training Camp. They were shown a variety of helicopters from an RNAS squadron that are all used in active service, and were even able to sit in one and see the controls that are used to pilot them. Although this will have been some of the cadets first visit to Altcar, the majority of our cadets have been there many times for activities such as full bore shooting and fieldcraft training.

A group of our cadets dragged themselves out of bed in the early hours of the morning today for a day out to Llandudno, Wales. We kicked off their day with a tour of the Conwy RNLI station, where they were got to sit in a d-class lifeboat and see all of the technology that goes into an everyday rescue, and were also shown head-cam footage of a real life or death rescue that happened only recently. To top it all of the cadets got front row seats to a real rescue as the crew were unexpectedly called out to a situation that was occurring nearby in the harbour. After their tour the cadets were taken to Colwyn Bay Watersport Centre for an afternoon of sailing and windsurfing on the open sea, which was a completely new experience for most and added an extra level of excitement to the sports that most of them have been doing for years. After a long day the exhausted cadets were driven up to the top of the Great Orme to admire the views of the Irish Sea and the rooftops of Llandudno, before going for a much needed McDonalds on the drive home.

Seven of our cadets recently stayed across the water for two weekends of catering and stewarding. Across the two weekends they learned all of the skills required to cater for large events, including selecting, preparing, and finally serving food to their guests. Because the cadets did so well with their catering, they also had the time to learn the skills required for their advanced stewarding qualifications. This involved the cadets learning how to prepare a table with place settings and napkins, as well as how to properly serve up the food they had made. To conclude their course our cadets were tasked with putting on a full mess dinner for the district staff, meaning that they had to decide upon a menu between themselves and then then cook and finally served the food to their guests. Feedback from their instructor was extremely positive, and the fact that some of the cadets are only new entries yet already have an advanced qualification is an great achievement, and a testament to the hard work they have put in.