Day 7 – Tacks and Ropies

Ahoy there folks, today we were delightfully woken by the song ‘Wannabe’ by the Spice Girls followed by Chucky’s voice calling everyone to walk around the ship’s deck. Just before getting into today’s schedule, we played Ubuntu – a game that very few us us knew but using our competitive spirit, we quickly learnt the rules and played a great round. Congrats to the winner, Cameron 🙂

After getting some movement in our legs, we had to fuel up for the day. At breakfast we all enjoyed a classic eggs and bacon on toast with some fruit on the side. Dropping the anchor and creating memories at Deal Island was a truly unforgettable experience, however, Chucky had an agenda, so we needed to crack on with the day.

It started with the daily morning brief, then some theory on how and what calls are made from the bridge when all of us youthies had to execute a tack on the ship. The tack was repeated four times, so we could all have a more rounded idea of what is involved, and it will surely help us when we put these skills into practice on command day in a couple days time. If using our strength on the sails wasn’t enough, we went ahead with the happiest of happy hours afterwards – a thorough cleaning of the ship.

Lunch came round shortly after, with most eating delicious tortellini coated in carbonara sauce. With no moment to spare, us ‘youthies’ jumped back up onto the deck and played our third round of rope races, led by Hoppy. However, it wouldn’t be the same without a bonus round. This entailed throwing a raw egg from a stationary spot to another member within our watch team. The challenging part of the game was when the person you threw the egg to would get further and further away with every successful catch. The furthest egg caught was about 8 meters from the thrower. At the time of writing this log, Blue Watch is on 10 points, White Watch is on 7 and Red Watch is on 6. I like to say the winner isn’t declared until the voyage is over, so let’s go White Watch.

Moving swiftly on from rope races, we had Captain Adam ‘Charlie’ Farley talk us through some sail theory before setting the captain’s challenge upon us. The direction was simple, to furl the current sails, then set them back out again along with the two topmost square sails. The dynamic of people wanting to lead was interesting as it was the first time we were calling the shots. Only allowed to ask three questions to assist us to achieving this challenge, we had to work as one. Even though it took approximately 1hr 55mins to complete, we were proud of the challenge we completed.

Feeling exhausted and hungry we all headed to dinner. On the menu tonight was mongolian beef, stir fried noodles, duck, boiled rice with scrumptious caramel and rocky road slices. Many thanks to Chef Ash for her amazing cooking.

At the time of writing this, myself (Charlotte) and Erika from White Watch are writing this day’s Captain’s Log during the 2nd dog watch (1745-1945). We both say hello to our family and friends reading these logs from home and hope you are well. Talk soon.