Day 04 – V09/25, Thursday Island to Darwin

Ahoy! This morning Red watch had the pleasure of watching a beautiful sunrise from the lower top deck. Many of blue watch didn’t make it to brekky as they chose a sleep in over Kingy’s custard tarts (big mistake).

Today also marked the first time the Fisherman’s sail had been set up in over 5 years. This was a massive team effort that showed the youthies were really beginning to understand the ropes. Soon after, we launched into rope races. Today, this involved pitting 3 groups against each other, seeing who could hoist, lower and name all their phonetic flags fastest. This almost came undone with a jammed pully, however, Bec came to the rescue with a heroic climb saving the day.

Bec is a hero. Part 2 of rope races involved a somewhat messy game of egg toss across the deck. This was played between watches with Blue watch coming out on top! Credit to Kevin for fireman sam’ing the cleanup.

Early afternoon involved a relaxing half-hour of silent sailing. This really allowed us to enjoy the sounds of the wind and the sea and nothing else. We ran silent during the afternoon siesta which made for an amazingly restful nap on the upper decks. So serene!

Youthies then got an amazing introduction to navigation from Matt (the navigator). This was awesome! By this time the crew were finally getting over most of the sea sickness that had been plaguing the ship.

Animals spotted today included a Black Noddy bird, stunning sea snake and a couple of yellow fin tuna. Overall the crew is largely moving past the crisis phase of the voyage and becoming saltier seadogs with each passing day. We are heading into our third consecutive night at sea and hopeful for an anchorage tomorrow. That would be nearly 330NM in three nights!

Kevin and Ewan signing out +