Completely Knackered

Our final night at sea for this Voyage approaches as the sun sets. It’s been a long and memorable one and the YC have been great shipmates and true Tall Ship sailors. We’ve had our ups and downs but we have triumphed overall because we have worked as a team. Tonight we sail through Dundas and Clarence Straits arriving in Darwin Harbour, tomorrow, Wednesday, for our last night at anchor.The YC Captain and XO (Adam and Ange) write about the two days the YC commanded Young Endeavour:Youth crew entry by Angela Hancock, 19 from Cronulla NSW and Adam Woolley, 21 from Launceston Tassie.The Youth crew election held on Friday the 15th of June was the beginning of the preparation process for command day on Voyage 10 2001. There were various roles that needed to be filled during the upcoming days, ranging from captain to chefs (who cook green mashed potatoes) to salty sea princesses.After the elections came the many cramming sessions in order to gain as much knowledge as possible to successfully take full command of the ship. We were given an objective to sail from anchorage off North Goulburn Island at 1600 Sat 16 June and sail south east of Guluwuru Island and pass through the hole-in-the-wall on a south easterly heading. From there we had to proceed to anchorage at Black Point, Port Essington by 1000 Monday 18 June.This was an extremely hard mission and was going to take an enormous amount of strength, courage and teamwork to make it through, and in the initial stages we may have under estimated how hard this was really going to be.As 1600 Saturday approached everyone started to get a little more excited as the realisation set in that a group of people who were total strangers with no sailing knowledge or experience 13 days ago were about to embark on a voyage that none of us are ever likely to forget.After a successful sail from anchorage we proceeded along a course set by our wonderful naviguesser. Our first tack occurred in the early hours of the morning setting us on course for our major challenge-the one-mile wide hole-in-the-wall passage. Smooth sailing soon turned into a mental and physical battle between us and unfavourable wind direction and conditions.Eight tacks and two wears later we finally conquered it – even though the islands may not have actually been there. The second day wasn’t as physically exhausting, however the mental and emotional strain didn’t relent. On arrival at Black Point we sent out a beach assault team to row ashore and gather as many locals as they could to sing the national anthem to claim a piece of land for the youth of Australia. (This was a little harder than expected as the total population of the area was about 15.)It was a huge team effort to conquer our command day and we did it in style – or at least we think we did. We were all completely knackered by the end but will all go away with great satisfaction and different experiences.Ange-having the time of my life. I’ll never forget this trip and all I’ve gained from it. There are so many cool people here and I’m just letting everyone at home know that I’ll be partying in Darwin for another couple of days yet. See you all soon, miss you all, love always to the Fam and friends.Stay tunedAndrew Davis