Day 3 – Whitsundays…Whitehaven Beach, Hill Inlet and Cid Harbour!

Ahoy shipmates…a spectacular Day 3, eloquently described below so I’ll keep it short. After an pleasant night of light air sailing (including a tack), we passed through Solway Passage just after sunrise and made our way to anchor off Hill Inlet on the northern end of the famous Whitehaven Beach. After some time ashore we weighed anchor and made our way through the spectacular Hook Passage between Hook and Whitsunday Islands before coming to anchor in Cid Harbour. After quick sea furls of our sails, a teak deck bbq and cheese platter was followed by 3 way talks (see below). Navigator Jerome then gave the anchor watch brief to the Youth Crew as they will be assisting in keeping the ship safe overnight. All are looking forward to a good night’s sleep in preparation for tomorrow’s adventure…a hike to the top of Whitsunday Peak and some spectacular views. I’ll hand you over to the gang for further detail. Until tomorrow, fair winds, Captain Kenny

Cassandra and Samuel
It was an early wake up for all youthies this morning, if you can even call midnight morning. The Blue, Red and White groups completed their first overnight watches. We all took turns as lookouts, performing engineering rounds and manning the helm. Even when some youthies had finished their shift, a midnight tack meant that everyone was called to the tacking stations for an early morning change of course. The overnight sailing brought us into the Whitsundays and we spent the morning at Whitehaven beach, climbing to the look out and having a wonderful time swimming in the crystal clear water. The beach was stunning, even if it was littered with a sea of tiny blue crabs. A couple of the youthies even saw a little reef shark swimming in the shallows.
Everyone is pretty much over their sea sickness by now, which meant that the cleaning got done much faster during “Happy” Hour. All the watch groups were back together and fought hard in the first round of the Rope Races (which oddly had nothing to do with the ropes). We also had our first navigation briefing, where we learnt about the three different methods that we can use to determine our position.
Over the day, we also managed to set and furl both the Topgallant and the Topsail (the two highest square sails). This meant that some brave youthies had to climb up the foremast again while the ship was underway. We then sat down for a lovely barbeque up on the deck, at our anchor point for the night, Cid Harbour.
Throughout the day we have been participating in Three Ways (three person discussions) where we are getting to know our fellow youthies, especially those from other watches. We will have to recount everything we have learnt in front of the whole crew later tonight.
We are all having a great time and are super excited for the rest of the voyage. We will leave you with our youthie’s quote of the day: “make that rope tick-i-di-boo”.

Shoutout from Cassie to Colleen, Cameron, Xanthe and Holly, and Samuel wants to shout out to Oliver, Lily and Elliot.