2013.10.31 Day 4 V18/13

Ahoy there Shipmates,We had another busy night at sea with the crew monitoring the safety of the Ship throughout. We sailed through the night with favourable west to north/westerly winds and it is a fine sight to see this magnificent tall ship with all three of her square sails set.Wakey Wakey (to the tune of AC/DC) was provided courtesy of the White Watch who had the morning watch today and they did a great job of handing in all sail in preparation for anchoring in Hicks Bay. Hicks Bay is just to the north of East Cape and we achieved our planned anchorage time of 0800. We all mustered on the bridge at 0900 for the morning brief. Salty (Jen) explained the origin of further nautical expressions such as ‘Heads and Figure Head’, after which Nana Diesel (Lindsey) paid us a visit and gave the crew some more pointers on the importance of tidiness and cleanliness onboard. After that she added another song to our repertoire.The crew then sprung into ‘Happy Hour’ while the Staffies prepared and launched our Rigid Hull Inflatable Boat (RHIB), which is the sea boat that we use in transferring people to and from shore. After “Happy Hour” we needed half of the Youth Crew to climb and sea furl all the sails we had just put away. This took us up to lunch.After yet another delicious lunch the Youth Crew were then ferried ashore in the Ship’s RHIB by Watch Officer Jen. The purpose of the anchorage in Hicks Bay was to give the crew a short break and some time off the Ship before a pretty hard slog over the next leg of our journey. So to maximise the visit ashore our supernumerary extraordinaire Marty provided entertainment through the form of some beach games. Good times were had by all. The Youth Crew were then free to go for wonder or explore of the area and prepare for one of the evenings activities known as the 3-way-talks. This where the crew are broken up into groups of 3 or 4 and have to learn about each other to enable them to speak for 2-3 minutes on any of their group members. It is a very effective way for the whole group to learn more about each other as well as providing them with a public speaking challenge.The return to Young Endeavour was good fun, having to launch oneself into the RHIB from waist high water off the beach as waves rolled in. Most people have seen surf life saving in action and today our Youth Crew got a taste of that person. They all got pretty wet, but did a great job. Everyone returned onboard by 1530 and soon after we had Round 3 of Rope Races.After a wonderful ‘teak-deck’ dinner we kicked-off the evening’s extravaganza, 3-way-chats and I must say that I was exceptionally pleased with everyone’s effort. They had taken the task seriously and had learnt enough about each other to be able to talk for a number of minutes. It was great to get a further insight into the make up of the amazing people in our team.With no time to waste and some challenging weather forecast ahead, as soon as 3-way-chats had finished we weighed anchor and set sail. The aim overnight is to consolidate all that the team has learnt thus far (navigation, sails, lines, climbing etc) and to continue to make as much ground as we can the south west. At 2115 we sailed past East Cape, the eastern most point on the New Zealand mainland. Everything to date has very much been in our favour, but if the forecast is correct, Mother Nature may put us through our paces over the next couple of days. So while the going is good, we intend to “make our hay while that sun is shining!”Until tomorrow evening. . . Carpe Diem!Yours AyeCaptain Dion Curtis         “