Day 2 Passage to King George River

Hello Shipmates,Welcome to Day 2 of the voyage. Following a well deserved and much needed night’s rest the Youth Crew awoke at 0600 to the sounds of one of Sail Master Kyle’s favourite tunes and to the delights of a warm, dry Darwin morning. After walking a few laps of deck everyone gathered at midships for a quick ice-breaker game before heading off for showers and a hearty breakfast. At 0750 the Youth Crew mustered on the port side of the bridge for their first experience of the ceremony of colours, during which the Ship’s flags (the Australian National Flag at the bow and the Australian White Ensign at the stern) are raised including ringing of the Ships bell and piping the still and the carry-on using the bosun’s call. That was followed by the morning brief, orchestrated by Kyle and including inputs from Horto speaking on water usage and the intricacies of operating the ship’s toilets, the Nav who talked about where we would go today and Salty-the-Seadog (Marty’s alter ego) who revealed the origin of the terms ‘starboard and port.’  On completion of morning brief Megan gave a more detailed safety equipment brief and then it was straight into cleaning stations (this activity is known as our ‘Happy Hour’, which even has its own little song). At 1030 we weighed anchor and proceeded to the vicinity of Stokes Hill wharf and at 1100 started the World Arc Yacht Rally, which involved 20 yachts from Australia and around the world.We then proceeded out of the harbour with the yachts, setting the fore-and-aft sails and the Top Gallant and Top Sail square sails. We altered course to the west when we exited the harbour and commenced our passage to King George River. The wind was north-easterly at 12 knots with negligible swell. After lunch we gave Watch Leaders the opportunity to do some further sail handling practice with their watches and finish off their watches’ Full Value Contracts. At 1400 we gave the youth crew some ‘chill time’ to enable them to relax, soak-up the ambience of being at sea or catch up on some sleep if they desired.At 1530 we conducted a ‘muster stations’ drill to practice the youth crew’s response to one of the ship’s alarms. This is a normal requirement of all ships when they first proceed to sea. This was followed by the Ship going to Tacking Stations to practice the whole-ship activity of Tacking or Wearing the Ship. This was practised until it was done smoothly and efficiently, with the aim of the crew being able to do it in the middle of the night on short notice if necessary. By the end the wind had dropped to light and variable and we were forced to start our engines and motor-sail to be able to achieve our speed requirement to get to King George river ontime.Keely produced a spectacular Mexican themed dinner for us to enjoy from 1730, complete with an authentic Mexican desert of rich chocolate, fresh cream and toasted pistachios. After dinner the crew prepared for their first night at sea. This will involve keeping 4 hour Sea Watches through the night, during which they will work the sails as required and keep the Ship safe performing duties as helmsman, lookouts, and conducting below deck engineering rounds. No doubt the crew will sleep well after a busy day!Until tomorrow,Yours AyeCaptain Mike