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Day 4 – Great Australia Bight
Hi Everyone,
Welcome to day four of our voyage. The wind strengthened to 20-25kts this morning and the swell increased to 2m causing a number of the Youth Crew to succumb to the dreaded sailor’s curse of seasickness. Given these conditions we kept activities to a minimum during the morning then managed to conduct a good set of rotational tacks and another round of rope races during the afternoon.
Given the changing weather conditions experienced throughout the day the Youth Crew have been kept busy continually setting and furling sails and while on watch consolidating some of their newly acquired mariner skills.
The time is now 2030 and we are currently located 265nm ESE of Esperance sailing close hauled under fore and aft sail and maintaining a boat speed of 7kts. Overnight we will continue to make best speed under sail as we continue our passage across the Great Australia Bight.
Kindly volunteering to write tonight’s Captains Log is Blue Watch, please enjoy.
Until tomorrow, take care
Yours Aye
Captain Gav
Captains Log
Continuing across the Great Australian Bight today marked the first of several days with no Australian Coastline in sight. After being hit by a few strong bullets of wind during the morning briefing and being forced to drop several sails we continued on with our shifts on the bridge practicing new skills we have learnt such as plotting our position and navigating on the charts. Before lunch we were provided with suitable conditions today to fly all three square sails from the foremast together for the first time in the voyage. As the effects of the open water and tiredness kick in Chef Marcus’ food has been underappreciated as many youth crew members struggled to stomach full meals. In the afternoon we spent time practicing our tacking of the ship with rotating areas that each watch group is responsible for as we repeatedly tacked the ship in suitable conditions. We followed this with Rope Races on the deck between watch groups racing to identify lines related to the foremast sails. With mixed results from the three watch groups it was clear that not everyone has mastered the names and locations of some of the lines required to set and furl the sails. As we move forward into day 5 we hope that we are able to keep more youth crew heads out of sick bags as we continue across the Great Australian Bight towards Adelaide.
Blue watch took over watch at 17:45 and were put straight to work sheeting in the Jib and fore staysail to come closer up on the wind. 5 watch members then ventured up the fore mast were we watched a beautiful sunset, took a few selfies all the while sharing a two pack of scotch finger biscuits – its all about team work with blue watch! After we clambered down the ratlines and gave each other a high five, we made our way back to the bridge where we shared our stories and we were lucky enough to witness an amazing shooting star off the starboard side, with Kenny storing it in his already full memory bank as one of the brightest he has ever seen! Hope he made a wish!!
G’day to Mum, Dad and Taylor from Jakey!!!
Latitude/Longitude:
Conditions:
Currently experiencing strong 20-25kt SSE winds with a 2m SW swell. Our current speed is 7kts and the temperature is 17 degrees.
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