Day 4 – Sea to Middle Percy Island

Ahoy there Shipmates,The ship remained at sea overnight on passage towards Middle Percy Island, our intended anchorage for tonight. All the watches had a chance during their night watches to further develop their watch-on-deck skills, including on the helm, being lookout and conducting engineering rounds, whilst further developing their climbing and sailwork skills as it was necessary to change the sail plan a number of times during the night.White Watch woke the crew at 0700 with a song they wrote the lyrics for, to the tune of a compilation of Spice Girls songs. After such a great start to the day we soon rolled into the morning routine of the brief followed by happy hour. We finally held the first edition of ‘Rope Races’ during the forenoon. ‘Ropies’, as it is known, is a non-competitive competition between the watches that tests the youthies’ Ship knowledge. The morning edition was focussed on the Ship’s safety equipment. This was followed by a demonstration by Staffies of ‘3-Way Chats’, which is an ice-breaker we will run this evening after dinner at anchor. Youthies are split into groups of 3, one from each watch, and they have to learn basic facts about each other member of their group so that they can speak about one of the two other people in their group. The facts include name, where they live, number of siblings, where they work/study, any hobbies or pets, an embarrassing moment and lastly a charade depicting their favourite film/TV show or book.We anchored in the lee of Middle Percy Island at 1330 with the intention of putting people ashore for a leg stretch and some games organised by the supernumeraries, however the relatively high wind and choppy conditions made embarking/disembarking the youthies from the boat hazardous so it was decided to remain onboard tonight and look at conditions in the morning. While waiting for dinner the crew were given time to prepare for 3-ways and also the second edition of ‘Ropies’ was held, the subject of which was parts of the fore-and-aft sails.Dinner was a delicious teak deck BBQ cooked by Haydo, his willing assistants and myself. The food was quickly demolished by a ravenous Youth and Staff Crew. There was a very chilled out vibe afterwards with everyone enjoying the fine conversation and quiet tunes in the background. Soon enough however Sandy wrapped up the end of dinner and moved onto three way chats. I was impressed by the standard of the presentations and it was obvious the youth crew had put some effort into learning some things about each other.After a very enjoyable evening finding out so much about each other Miquela the Nav explained how the anchor watches work and there was a cheer when the Youthies worked out they would get a decent nights sleep tonight. They do have a great deal of responsibility however as they continue to look after the safety of the Ship throughout the night.We plan to remain at anchor overnight and then sail tomorrow around midday for our next destination which is the Whitsunday Islands.Until tomorrow, yours, ayeCAPT MikeP.S. Internet connectivity has been intermittent due to poor 3G coverage in the areas we have been operating since departing Gladstone. “