Day 8 – Command Day

Ahoy there from Subin, our Youthie Captain and Emma, our Youthie Nav.

Day 8 of our 10 day voyage, the start of a big 24 hours for all of the youth crew on board. Today is ‘COMMAND DAY’.

After yesterday’s briefs and elections everyone was very keen for the start of command day. Everyone started out their day with an early morning sunrise climb, one of the best sunrises of the trip. After a bite of brekky, our elected crew in the positions of captain, sailmaster, navigator, watch leader and chefs, all partook in opposites. Opposites is where the elected youth crew member has the opportunity to sit down with the staff equivalent, to discuss the role and to ask any questions that they may have.

At 1000 hours, Captain Adam “Charlie” Farley handed over the keys to the ship to youthie Captain Subin along with the command day brief, navigation instructions and 24 challenges to complete within the 24 hours. From here the staffies are on a 24 hour summer vacation!

You’ll now hear from one of our command day Chefs Tess and Sail Mistress Staz…

 With Command day starting at 1000 for all the youthies Abbey and Tess began their preparation of being the ‘Cackling Cooks’ for the next 24 hours at breakfast time to get Jenko out of the Kitchen and us 2 in the kitchen. He gave us a brief on how to operate the galley and not burn the ship down… Don’t worry I asked where the fire blanket was!

The last morning brief held by the staffies was conducted at 0800 with another very interesting production which may or may not have involved a human cannon being suspended from the roof!? Up on deck the first challenge that was attempted was creating a hammock out of ropes that would fit 16 youthies. First challenge = SUCCESS.

The day started a little rocky with a whole bucket of nerves, but that’s to be expected when amateurs take over a tall ship. With the wind not being on our side either the speed was a little slow, but so far we are on track and working as a team! The 2 chefos then had lunch prepared including the much requested “tack n cheese”, a chicken… or 6, and delicious butter chicken that might have been emergency food, preparing for the worst.

An abundance of setting sails and furling, to then set again, had our crew working double time. Before dinner time while the morale was a little low we wrangled together to set the ship to a steady course as we were blessed with consistent wind.

Whilst the crew was stressing on the upper deck, Abbey and Tess started channelling their inner Mexican with a themed dinner, “Mexican Fiesta!!” Having a few technical music difficulties, ability of cutting whole chicken difficulties and smoking out the galley and café difficulties, dinner was served by 2 cackling cooks in ponchos, moustaches and hats in ‘French’ accents.

To end a ripper of a day which was started by one of the best sunset climbs ever, a 12 minute disco in the 12 berth was partied to, with Hoppy the DJ and Theresa the bouncer. Let’s just say there may be some sore voices and bodies tomorrow morning, but it was all worth it (challenge number 2 = SUCCESS)

We better head off and finish the last half of command day ending at 1000 when we hand the ropes back over.

Youth Crew Staz and Tess x