Command Day/Queen’s Baton Relay

‘We’re not going to make it’. Sung to the tune of ‘We’re not goingto take it’ from some blokey band I don’t know the name of (but I’mtold the ship’s engineer has a good idea…), the youth crew commandday began the morning with Tom and Sean’s version of ‘irony’.Certainly, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. We accidentally weared theship during a tack (yes, that does require some effort – 180 degreesof extra turning is suprisingly difficult to comprehend), we lockedthe ship in ‘irons’ for a fair while and around midnight had windspeeds of zero knots.But make it we did and for all of us it’s been a fantastic journey onwhat was already such an incredible trip. The way command dayoperates is that the youth crew gets assigned certain tasks and givena list of activities that can all score points. The more points thebetter. And in pursuit of such points this youth crew travelled justover 70 miles with a top speed of 8.4 knots (all under sail – we onlyused the motors to anchor), set every sail aboard the ship at leastonce, tacked something like 14 times, adopted the Australian nationalanthem to the vegemite song, drew murals on the deck, had the mostdelicious of Mexican meals for lunch (which was all prepared while wewere simultaneously traversing the ‘cube of glory’ by tacking seventimes to pass through nine checkpoints within a four square milearea), cleaned the ship, tied ridiculously complex knots, and avoidedsunburn. Bragging just because we can, we were pretty chuffed tolearn that Captain Chris has never known a youth crew to get throughthe ‘cube of glory’, nor to use every single sail on command day. Thebest bit, though, was the amount of fun we had doing it. Totally outof our comfort zones and loving every minute of it.At 1300 we handed back command and the focus became the Queen’sbaton relay. Mon, Michael and Kristy, decked in Wallaby jerseyswere Australia’s first representatives to take the torch from NewZealand’s sail training ship ‘Spirit of New Zealand’. For me thoughthe best moment was the whole youth crew chanting along to ‘We areone, we are Australian’ as we entered Auckland harbour.So that’s the end of a pretty incredible thirty six hours. Luckilyfor us there’s still six days to go.Signing off,Fly.p.s. Laura says hi to Ziven. She also says love you. Michael sendsa big hello to all his family too.