My Interview

The day of my interview dawned. Excited, I had spent the previous night in Portsmouth, so it was quite an easy journey across to Gosport on the ferry and a walk to the Clipper headquarters – with a slight detour to look at the boats on the way!

Armed with coffee, biscuits and fairy cakes – to celebrate someone’s birthday – a group of about 10 of us settled down to a presentation given by David Cusworth, Clipper’s Recruitment Manager. Though apparently designed to give us the warts-and-all view of life on a stripped-down racing yacht, it made me even more keen. After a short break with more coffee, we had our one-to-one interviews.

Mine was pretty thorough with Carol, the Crew Manager – at least it took three times as long as everyone else’s.

On leaving the interview I wanted to go up the Spinnaker Tower, but by the time I got to the ferry I could not even see the top of it, so explored the Gunwharf Quays shopping centre instead, hoping that the cloudiness would not turn out to be a reflection of my Clipper experience!

The day I heard that I had passed the interview and was awarded a place on the Race, subject to a successful Level 1 training, I was supposed to be working from home. I spent most of it jumping around the house I was so excited (sorry boss).

Life’s never that simple though, is it?

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