Writing for Publication
Exemplar C: Merit
The Voyage

It all began after watching the America's Cup on T.V. I'd been doing a lot of sailing and swimming in the holidays but this designing your own craft idea really appealed to me. Some friends and I began designing our boats. Ones with sails would be too complicated, so they would just have to be rafts.

In the end with only two of us still right into the idea, we ended up building only one raft. The plan was for a fabulous craft, with three hulls, a hole in the middle to look and swim down and nets between the hulls, to catch any falling objects. As I say, the plan was for a fabulous craft, we even had the timber laid out on the lawn in the raft's planned shape. Due to unforeseen technical difficulties it didn't turn out quite as planned. In the end it was just a square contraption filled with bottles and pieces of polystyrene, but it was ours, we had designed and built it ourselves and that's what mattered.

We all grabbed an edge and trudged out the drive, down the path and down the steps to the bay. We slid the raft off the rocks and it surged into the water. Grabbing our particle board paddles, we leaped aboard. After drifting round Willow Bay for a while, we set off on an 'ocean voyage'. We went from Willow Bay, labouring hard with our disintegrating particle board paddles across Little Shoal Bay and finally after many a blister, there was relieving graunch of wood on coarse sand. We sprang ashore and dragged the raft a little way up Halls Beach. We grabbed some biscuits and collapsed on the damp sand. Once we'd recovered it was time to head back. As we slid the raft into the water, I realised the journey back would be twice as hard - the wind that was with us would now be against, and our particle board paddles were like sticks with cardboard on the end. We were making little progress and the raft seemed to be getting lower and lower in the water, but we kept going.

Eventually, we neared the shore and by then we were sitting in the water. We were making no ground, our broomsticks could no longer move our submerged raft against the wind. We jumped off, and began to push the raft towards the rocks. When at last we reached the rocks, we still had most of the raft, but as we hauled it from the water, it finally gave up the ghost. We wandered up the path exhausted. In our raw hands we held bits of wood adventure. Oh well back to the drawing board! 	

	Ideas developed, supported by details about the adventure, eg.
-	the making of the raft:
"a square contraption filled with bottles and pieces of polystyrene"
-	the 'voyage':
"finally after many a blister, there was relieving graunch of wood on coarse sand"

Evidence of a controlled writing style. Appropriate vocabulary choice captures the writer's experience:
-	"our particle board paddles were like sticks with cardboard on the end"
-	"In our raw hands we held bits of wood adventure."

Clear structure:
-	planning then building the raft
-	the 'voyage' out, then the return

Writing conventions used accurately:
- spelling
- punctuation
- grammar
- syntax
- paragraphing