DAY 9 – COMMAND DAY PART 2

Ahoy there Shipmates,Today we were awoken at 0700 to the song of “Barbie Girl”, thanks to a special request from youth crew member Aaron. The song seemed suitable as most of the youth crew needed a morale booster after limited sleep and a difficult night at sea! During the night, the youth crew had been keeping watch, adjusting sails and occasionally tacking or wearing the ship.After enjoying the song, youth crew members were treated to another amazing meal from the master chefs (they had been cooking since 0430). An entertaining morning brief took place at 0900, involving some special guest speakers, nursery rhymes (which sounded much better in the rehearsal) and a birthday cake!The morning brief began with a performance of the Australian National Anthem to 5 different tunes. The performance was well received by the staff members. Obviously, we must have delivered the songs in tune as the staff members managed to guess all five songs! George (Sail Master) updated the crew on the plan for the day and remaining tasks to be completed. Michelle (navigator) then showed a detailed picture that she had prepared earlier, which outlined how far we travelled overnight (and a few slight detours we had taken). We had passed a waypoint position at around 0600 and we were now back on track for the final waypoint position. I then spoke to the youth crew and encouraged them to continue to work together despite the overnight difficulties and to value the strengths and capabilities of each team member.Somehow, a couple of stowaway ladies had climbed on board during the night. We stumbled across them in the engine room whilst conducting rounds and decided to introduce them to the group. It didn’t take the “ladies” long to flirt with Marty. He was in for a difficult decision as he was told he could only have one of them! We then heard from Grandpa (Nanna’s better half), who cleaned up after many of the staff members. Grandpa attempted to teach the staff and youth crew some pre prepared choreography to a nursery rhyme (Mary had a little lamb). As it did not go to plan entirely, we resorted to a powerful rendition of “crabs and seashells”.After morning brief, we moved onto our favourite part of the day…HAPPY HOUR! The youth crew were all extremely excited to know that happy hour was taking place (not really). Anyway, as they say…a clean ship is a happy ship! Adam inspected our cleaning to ensure that it was up to the Sail Master’s standard. He said that it the best Happy Hour cleaning he had ever seen (or something along those lines).We proceeded in accordance with the navigation instructions by undertaking correct fixing procedures and maintaining lookout throughout the morning. Alongside this, we also completed the remaining tasks. Ainslie and Rachel performed an in depth knot demonstration for Dave. Loza and Aaron created a decorative and colourful chalk mural at midships. Pete and Jodie continued polishing all of the brass (believe it or not, they volunteered for this job).Our enthusiastic team of climbers went aloft once again, Meg continued writing a humorous song (yet to be revealed) which will highlight our Young Endeavour experiences. We were then treated to an Alice in Wonderland themed meal, which our master chefs had spent the entire morning preparing.As we realised that we were running out of time, we quickly furled a number of sails, for instance the main staysail, main sail and forestaysail. Soon after furling the remaining sails, we arrived within 1nm of the final waypoint and prepared to hand the ship back to Captain Mike.Thankfully, Tahni’s nightmare of crashing into the rocks did not come to fruition. Instead, we arrived safely at our final destination and managed to complete all 22 tasks! At 1300, we handed the ship back to Mike and within minutes, the entire crew were sleeping like babies.Yours, AyeYouth Captain Vanessa——————————————Ahoy there Shipmates,As Youth Captain Vanessa detailed, the Command day for the Youth Crew was an incredible journey, a day filled with individual and team discovery, challenges, rewards, lessons, friendships and beauty. Now that we are alongside the FORGACS wharf in Newcastle we have many post-Command Day activities we need to complete before we can relax and enjoy a Ship’s Concert after our upper-deck BBQ dinner.The intention is to remain alongside overnight and sail tomorrow morning to allow the youth crew to host the community-day sailors and show them how much fun it is to sail Young Endeavour.Until tomorrow.Yours Aye,Captain Mike