Day 10 – Command Day Part 2…and a Fond Farewell.

Ahoy shipmates…Day 10…we made it. The youth crew have safely navigated us to Sydney and as I write we are at anchor in Double Bay with magnificent views of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. It has been an adventure and an absolute pleasure having this enthusiastic group of young Australians onboard, a fantastic way to resume the youth development program. They are all now part of the Young Endeavour family, for they may leave Young Endeavour, but Young Endeavour never leaves them. Tomorrow for the short transit to HMAS Waterhen we will be joined by the Patron of the Young Endeavour Youth Scheme His Excellency, General the Honourable David Hurley AC DSC (Retd), Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, and Her Excellency Mrs Linda Hurley, Commander Australian Fleet Rear Admiral Mark Hammond AM and Mr Stephen Moss CSC Executive Director Young Endeavour Youth Scheme…a great honour and privilege for us all. That’s about it from me…I’ll hand over to the youth crew one last time. Wishing you all fair winds and following seas, Captain Kenny…out!———-
Ahoy followers of the Young Endeavour! The late night of Day 9 and the early hours of Day 10 brought more challenges to the Youthie crew during Command Day and into the night. After attempting to use wind power in our sails to achieve some navigational objectives for our Task Sheet, we quickly learnt that 1 knot winds that frequently change direction with water currents that work against us is not ideal for sailing a tall ship and we were dead in the water later in the evening of Command Day. The Youthie crew did all that was possible before the Staffies had to turn the engines on and set new waypoints for us out to sea before making our way to Sydney Harbour for our last evening on the Young Endeavour. The Youthie crew were courageous during the night with overcoming fatigue to ensure all watches were kept and sails were set and furled as needed in the middle of the night. A huge shout out to the Watch leaders Mary and Connor for managing and supervising their teams, orange watch and pink watch respectively, over the longest watches of the voyage – 6 hours straight!
After a long night, we came to anchor in Double Bay around 0600. This gave the Youthie crew ample opportunity to make use of the delightful Sydney morning and small wind to achieve more objectives for the Task Sheet. We succeeded in completing a total of 21 from 23 tasks available for us to complete, which given the trying conditions and smaller crew of 16 Youthies (down from the regular 24), is a fantastic achievement!
We are proud of how the Youthies conducted themselves during the 24 hours we had command of the Young Endeavour. The level of skill and knowledge that we were all able to apply to the Command Day was astonishing, with every member contributing to achieve our objectives. This is a huge testament to all of the Staffies for their incredible work in teaching us how to sail the Young Endeavour. The fact they were able to successfully teach us the required skill to sail the tall ship by ourselves with minimal input after only 8 days is unbelievable. Huge shout out also to the Chefs of the Command Day: Sandro, Em and Ryan, who kept us sustained with amazing food all day.
During a crisp morning, we all managed to lay aloft the foremast for stunning panoramas of Sydney as we packed away the main sails under their UV cover. A comedy sketch, rope-hammock, and 3 educational briefings on Beatboxing , Taikwondo, and how to ‘hack’ later, command day came to an end. We handed command officially back over to the staffies at 11am and the rest of the day consisted of debriefing after a very memorable 10 days and unwinding with the beautiful backdrop of Sydney. We can’t thank all the Staffies enough for the knowledge, skill, growth and fun that we all experienced over the past 10 days on our adventure of a lifetime! Captain Liam, Sail Master Tayla and Navigator Ethan, Watch Officer Connor, and Crew Sam.