Day 7 – Captain’s Setting & Furling, Captains Challenge and Broughton Island!

Ahoy Shipmates. Overnight the comfortable conditions have continued whilst the Youth Crew completed an activity titled Stop, Start, Continue (a feedback exercise they complete amongst themselves). We also conducted a number of tacks/wears to hone their skills in preparation for Command Day. The morning was filled by Captain’s setting and furling (see below), morning brief, happy hour and a meteorology brief. After lunch rope races and the infamous egg drop had most of the crew in hysterics. The day at sea was wrapped up with the Captain’s Challenge before we proceeded to anchor on the western side of Broughton Island. I then gave the Command Day brief, advising the Youth Crew of their roles and responsibilities, and after another delicious bbq, the Youth Crew held their elections with the results as follows: Captain-Jackson, Sailmaster-Jessie, Navigator-Aaron, Watch Officer-Pat G, Red Watch Leader-Sarah, White Watch Leader-Finn, Blue Watch Leader-Kieren and Chefs Charlie, Elliott and Pat T. Fair winds and following seas to all. Captain K———-

Day 7, It was finally our chance to showcase the skills of sailing that we had learnt over the last week in the Captain’s Setting and Furling task, leaving responsibility in the hands of the watches. Overall each of the watches successfully completed the task, demonstrating they are capable of calling orders and handling the lines and sails of the ship, leading to a well deserved reward of a family size bag of Tim Tams for each watch. As we travelled from Broken Bay, the youthies learnt all about meteorology with Tracey and how it ties in with the ship’s desired navigation plan. We learnt about factors such as wind directions, high and low pressure systems, swell and trade wind. After this informative chat, the youthies split up into our coloured watches to begin round 5 of Rope Races, trying to identify random objects around the vessel. A bonus round was the conducted, where the groups were given a bucked filled with a paper bag, orange floss, some pegs and a latex glove to save their respective watch leader (or the fragile egg) from imminent death, being dropped off of the lower top. Two of the three groups managed to save their leader with only one eggy fatality.
As we are approaching Command Day at a fast rate, the youthies need to prepare for what awaits them. A lead in to this was the Captain’s Challenge where prospective youthies were demonstrating their sailing prowess! In short, the ship was stopped and we needed to all work together as a team, set the sails again, and get the ship underway!! This meant we needed to use effective communication and put all the skills and knowledge from all of the youthies together to make it to the end of the challenge. In total this took approximately 40 minutes which in our opinion was quite quick. After the completion of this activity we received a quick brief from Captain Kenny about things to expect moving forward into Command Day, and the responsibilities of each Command position.
To end the day at sea, we anchored off Broughton Island, having yet again another delicious BBQ from Chef Marcus and the other staffies. We were then able to vote our crew into the Command group for the day that follows with Youthie Captain Jackson guiding all in the right direction home. Stay tuned, we’ll let you know if we successfully arrive where we’re meant to, or if we accidently end up sailing to New Zealand!..
Georgia, Kai, James.