Captain's Log
V05/18 Adelaide to Hobart
26 February 2018

Motion of the ocean

Ahoy there!Welcome to day three of our voyage. Overnight we remained at sea on passage towards Tasmania. The wind started off south-easterly at 15 – 20 kn and gradually backed more easterly early in the morning. At 2300 we rounded the western side of Kangaroo Island and altered course from the SW to more southerly and then, as the wind backed, to a SE course. We encountered two swells. One from the east and one from the south and both were under 1.0 metre in height. Many youth crew did not sleep well on their first night while their bodies were getting used to the Ship’s motion under the influence of a swell on the bow. Some experienced sea sickness in the light conditions.Sail Master Guv woke everyone at 0700, our usual at-sea wakey-wakey time, with one of his retro tunes. After breakfast we had our first at-sea Morning Brief, during which ‘Salty’ (alias Watch Officer Harry) paid us another visit to explain some more of the sailor’s lingo we use onboard. Today he explained the origin of the terms ‘port’ and ‘starboard’. After my motivational quote from Theodore Roosevelt the crew got into ‘Happy Hour’, our name for cleaning stations.Round 2 of Rope Races was conducted at 1300 followed by some free time for the crew to enjoy the sunshine on deck and also to prepare for the activity this afternoon that we call 3 – Way Chats. This is an ‘Ice – Breaker’ activity which includes some public speaking. The youthies were split into groups of 3, one from each watch, and they had to learn enough about each other to be able to speak for 2-3 minutes on both other people in their group. Sail Master Guv only announced who was going to speak on whom 30 seconds before each group began. Staffies really enjoy the activity because it is a great opportunity to learn more about the whole crew. Each person ends off their talk with a charade depicting the person’s favourite ‘movie, TV show or book’ and the first to guess the correct title scores a point. It is always a stiff competition between Staffies the youth crew, although I suspect the Staffies have the edge as many of the youthies have never played charades.Dinner went on at the normal time of 1715 and then the crew settled in to night watches on deck, which will be maintained through the night.Currently we are located 125nm to the WSW of Robe motor sailing in light NE winds towards Port Davey on the Tasmanian west coast.Until tomorrow, Yours AyeCaptain Mike

Latitude/Longitude:

37 53.5’ S / 137 15 7’ E

Conditions:

Weather – fine with 3/8 cloud, Wind – from 070 / 8 kn, Swell – from SE at 0.5 m, Temp – 19 deg C.