COMMAND DAY PART 1

Ahoy Shipmates,Command Day is well underway and the Youth Crew are taking very good care of Young Endeavour. One of the many tasks to be completed during the 24 hour period is for both Youth Crew Captains to write the Captains Log for both tonight and tomorrow, which gives me two nights off. Please find below the first Captains Log entry by Captain MichaelUntil tomorrow, take care.Yours AyeCaptain GavVOYAGE 02-09 COMMAND DAY CAPTAINS LOGSaturday 24th of January, Captain Michael Darzins’ Log.The day started with a sense of fear and anxiety throughout the crew. You could see in many people’s eyes that they were fearful of taking control of the ship. Captain Gav gave me some sound advice to be cool calm and collected. But as hard as I tried, the questions being thrown at me from all directions made me a little uneasy. It’s funny how differently people react to pressure. Someone could have done something a hundred times without the littlest problem, and then once the pressure is put on them have a complete mental blank. Never the less, I think the entire youth crew kept themselves together pretty well under the circumstances.Our first task in control of the Young Endeavour was to send a BAT (Beach Assault Team) ashore to Rye. Their task was to raise the Australian flag to the highest point we could find and get as many people together to sing the national anthem, as well as decoding the cryptic message to find our navigation waypoints. The entire mission was a success. The BAT sent the flag up the ferris wheel and managed to muster about 15 locals to join in with the national anthem. They also managed to find our navigation directions that were hidden at Video Ezy. The rest of the crew that didn’t head ashore focused on the other tasks given to us such as making a chalk mural on the deck (which I think ended up looking quite spectacular), polishing all the brass on the boat and trying to eat all of the fruit left in the fruit locker. Our next task once the BAT got back onto the boat and we retrieved the boats was to get the ship sailing.Making way from anchor was interesting to watch. Standing on the bridge I could see everyone running around on deck like a bunch of headless chooks. No one really looked to be in charge or control. Everyone was put into new watches and had new tacking stations, so no one really knew what they were doing. But soon enough the crew had settled into their new watches, the watch leaders started to take control and everyone began to move around with some purpose.We had a plan in mind and like usual it didn’t quite go as we would have liked. We ended up being pushed around to the starboard side instead of the port. But the wind was in a favourable direction and with a few quick adjustments we were back on our planned course. The first few sails to be hauled up took a lot longer than usual but with some patience they were all up and we were moving with fairly nice speed. After the first few sails were up all of the crew really began to work together and looked like a real team. All of my nerves as Captain seemed to float away with the breeze and things started to run smoothly.The youth crew were given six waypoints to pass through. The plan was to reach number three at around midnight and change over all of the positions at that time. As it was the ship was making some really good ground and we reached the third waypoint at approximately 1930. So instead of the first command crew taking the ship all the way to the final destination, we thought it was a better and fairer idea to do the change over shortly after this time.Although my time as Captain was short (about eight hours in the end), I really enjoyed myself. It was a truly fantastic experience to take control of such an impressive ship and all of the youth crew onboard. I can only hope that Alex, and the rest of the second command crew, has as much fun and success as I did.