Captain's Log

V09/25, Thursday Island to Darwin

1 June 2025

Day 07 – V09/25, Thursday Island to Darwin

We had a chilly morning on watch this morning with 26 degrees at 4am. The ship sailed her way to our next anchorage travelling across Arafura Sea with winds of 25kn and seas to 1m which caused the ship to heel 20 degrees starboard. It was exciting sailing on a beautiful starry night! After the morning brief and happy hour we were presented with a Navigation Challenge to try to plot a course between two points (sailing upwind). This made us consider our sail plan, courses to steer and how to plan our tacks on a chart. It also demonstrated that there isn’t only one way to solve a problem and that it is always better to do it together as a team.

We are sailing across some interesting waters when you think about how close our northern neighbours are up here. This afternoon one of the beautiful big grey Royal Australian Navy Warships came steaming over the horizon and pulled up 250 yards on our port beam. After we gave them our nautical greeting across the high seas they blasted their horn and took off – back to whatever their mission might be. Thanks for coming to say Hello and we wish you fair winds and following seas in your travels. It’s great to know we have cool friends out here…

Before dinner we had a couple of hours of watch leader practice in preparation for command day as it is coming up in 2 days’ time. This was invaluable and we go to bed more confident for the days to come.

Demonstration Tacking stations this afternoon was amazing because we got to learn new things about the wind in our sails and handling the ship. We enjoyed sharing the bridge with the Captain, Sailmaster and Nav and learning about how to turn the ship through the wind and coordinate all the teams on deck to make it happen.

The Watch Leaders have a very special role to us – an important role on this ship – because they teach all the Youthies everything we need to know about this beautiful big girl that takes us safely on our voyage from A to B.

“You can’t change the wind, but you can adjust your sails”.

Signing off

Chris and Francis +

Latitude/Longitude:

11 21.104 S / 133 56.935 E

Conditions:

Weather: Sunny Wind: 25 KN SE Temp: 26 C

AUTHOR: Peta Binns

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Day 09 – V18/25, Geelong – Sydney

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Day 08 – V18/25, Geelong – Sydney

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Day 07 – V09/25, Thursday Island to Darwin

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