Another wonderful day at sea!

Ahoy there Shipmates, The ship remained at sea overnight once again making our way south towards Morton Bay. We had some fantastic sailing overnight with the wind on our beam. There were quite a few passing showers however so we maintained a very conservative sail plan to ensure that when the rain squalls hit we were not caught unaware with to much canvas up. The watches conducted a teamwork exercise overnight which from all accounts was challenging, tricky but most of all rewarding. Judging by the happy faces at morning brief, I would have to say that the crew are all getting along famously and really enjoying the voyage. After the normal morning routine the ship rolled into a set of demonstrational tacks. This exercise gives three member of each watch the chance to come up to the bridge and see how we tack the ship. Its an important building block on their ships knowledge and an excellent step after the rotational tacks that they all did yesterday. This set of tacks was then followed up by yet another wonderful lunch. After lunch we had a nice quite hour of silent running before kicking into the next round of rope races. The competition is starting to ramp up and each watch is still in the running for first place. The watches then split up into their three groups and went to a part of the ship to conduct mid voyage chats. This is a good opportunity for the watches to reflect on how far they have come and if there is anything they would like to do differently for the second half of the voyage. To finish of the afternoon we did a wear (a wear is the opposite of a tack, so the ship changed directions) to head back to the north and slow down our progress a bit. I then conducted the next instalment of sail theory which although it touched on a few of the more complex idea behind sailing a tall ship I think a lot of the crew understood the finer detail. Tonight we plan to remain at sea in some quite blustery conditions. It will be a good experience for the Youth Crew to do some more sailing just to the north of Morton Bay. We will maintain a conservative sail plan to allow the watches to continue to progress towards their final aims prior to command day. Until tomorrow, may the stars always show you the way home CAPT Matt Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the number of moments that take your breath away Just a note for Emma’s wee brother, Graham. Congratulations on finally finishing high school! Enjoy the graduation ceremony and more importantly your prom, I’m sure it will be an amazing night. Have fun! Thinking of you and everyone else, Lots of Love, Emma