Day 3 – Sydney Harbour and Invictus Games

Ahoy Shipmates…after our first full night at sea we entered Sydney Harbour this morning at 0600, berthing adjacent to the Opera House to support the Invictus Games…a priviledge and an honour. But as promised, I’ll let the Youth Crew fill in the details…fair winds…Captain Kenny…-…Captains Log 21 Oct 18
Hi world, this is Tom and Marnie here telling you about our third day on board the Young Endeavour.
We sailed through the night last night and had our first chances to do a 4 hour sailing watch. This involved divvying up the hours of the night to our watches (Red, White, and Blue). We learnt the basic watch tasks such as:
– Lookout: keeping an eye on approaching ships and coasts
– Helm: steering the ship according to the determined course
– Navigating: Determining the best direction to travel
– Rounds: Checking all machinery settings are as normal
– Setting and Furling Sails: We tacked the sails when necessary to change direction.
Overnight the most exciting event was the crossing of the Radiance of the Seas, a Caribbean Cruise Liner along our path, which overtook us due to the rules of the road.
We began the day with an excellent breakfast and a morning sunrise over Sydney Harbour. Today we docked at Man’O’War Steps at Circular Quay directly beside the Opera House to be involved in the Invictus Games Sailing Race that occurred today. In our Morning Briefing we learnt that we travelled 26 Nautical Miles overnight and we have many animals named tools on Board including dogs, monkeys, ducks, cats, mice, lizards and more! We were advised that we will only regret what we do not do, and we went into our day with a no regrets attitude. We cleaned our ship til she was happy and well dressed for her prime position to watch the race and welcome our guests.
This was our first dock at land and we took the opportunity to go ashore and learn the rules of the road (sea) with colourful apples in the botanical gardens. Golden Delicious apple was our mast light, Granny Smith was our Starboard light and Pink Ladies were our Port lights. We will now get the chance to use our better understandings of the rules of the road in further watches and adventures.
After learning the rules, we explored the Botanical Gardens, The Opera House and Circular Quay while learning fun facts about our friends from different coloured watches. We returned to the boat to watch the final races of the Invictus Games with our remaining guests and learn more from the whole crew and wider family of the Young Endeavour.
We set off towards double bay and set the anchor for the night. With a beautiful view of Sydney and the harbour we spent more time having fun with the whole crew by playing a game testing our knowledge of deck safety and another game involves keeping your feet behind a chalk line and walking your hands forwards to place a metal circle as far from you as possible and using only one hand to return. We all fell over and laughed a lot. This was followed by a delicious Barbeque on deck with Pavlova for desert!
We finished our day playing 3 ways, a game in which we become another member of the youth crew and introduce ourselves with name, age, family, pets, school/job, aspirations, interesting fact, embarrassing story, and concluded with a charade for their favourite book/movie. This was accompanied by popcorn and lots of laughs.
We now will have our first turns at anchor watch, a shorter watch in which we will keep the ship safe while we remain in the one place.
Wish us Luck!