Day 5 – At Anchor Deal Island

Hi Everybody,
Welcome to Day 5 of our voyage, please find a thrilling summary of today’s exploits written tonight by Blue Watch.
Yours Aye,
Captain Gav

Day 5 – Going Ashore
Throughout the night, we conducted some challenging sail setting exercises that pushed the knowledge and limits of each group, all whilst en route to Deal Island. After Wakey Wakey Chef Zac whipped-up some lovely asparagus and mushrooms with fried ‘eggys’ to set us up for an exciting day ahead.
As usual the youthies tried to impress the sail master by singing the ‘Happy Hour’ song, where we hoped that one day we could get Harri to clean the entire ship with his toothbrush, if our performance was good enough. However he was a harsh critic and we were left to clean the ship once again.
Each watch then climbed the foremast to sea furl the square sails while we were sailing which was a new experience for most of the youthies – particularly noting the rolling Bass Strait swell. Following this, we had a well deserved lunch of grilled salmon and chicken kievs. After, we anchored in Garden Cove, Deal Island at about 1340 whilst conducting the highly competitive, non-competitive Rope Races where the Blue team absolutely dominated to the dismay of their rival teams. Red continued to underperform (…..seriously, it’s not competitive at all!!).
With a sunny sky and the prospect of a hike, we conducted five sea boat transfers to ferry all the youthies and some staffies ashore in order to walk to the Commandant’s House (now a museum). At both a “literal and figurative crossroads”, we had the option to either explore a lookout, or to walk the route to the disused lighthouse. With Guv’s wise advice to have “no regrets”, a group of us walked to the top of Deal Island to look over the tallest lighthouse in the southern hemisphere. We found an 80 year old bottle in the ruins of a ruined building and took with us. Upon return to the cove the majority of the youthies forgot their bathers, and with the mentality that we may never swim off Deal Island ever again we plunged in, clothes and all, into the stunning but freezing Bass Strait waters.
Once back onboard we had a BBQ, to warm up, with all the usual favourites: burgers, steak, crocodile, Emu and Kangaroo….!! Dessert was two beautifully decorated pavlovas, where the fruit was arranged in the shape of Harri’s face on one and the other had our voyage number shaped in berries.
Throughout the trip, the legendary Blue fam (formerly known as Blue Watch but changed to ‘fam’ to describe our close knit relationship) have been having a competition with the remaining members of the group who have yet to have seasickness. Going strong into day 6, Will and Sam have requested our lovely readers to place their bets on who will last the longest in our ‘Blue Vomit Competition’. We will update everyone tomorrow.
A mad shoutout to Daz from Tas’ mum