Captain's Log
V03/25, Geelong to Hobart
31 January 2025

Day 5 – Bay of Fires and Wineglass Bay

Ahoy from Simoné and Aiden and… THE ONE, THE ONLY RED WATCH!!!!!!

From an early start at midnight to an early morning at 3am we are so happy to be reporting and sharing day five with you.

Day five started at midnight with a beautiful stargaze from the lower top on a crystal clear night. We then handed over to the morning watch who were so incredibly lucky to start their day from the lower top with the sun rising behind them and highlighting the bay of fires right ahead of us at 2 nautical miles. The amazing views from up the mast during the silent hours is truly inspiring.

Waking up to the tune of live bag pipes on main broadcast, and Hutchy leading us on the trumpet, we roused the rest of the ship with a salty sea shanty. The Navigator tried not to tell us but eventually let slip that our destination was to the one and only Wineglass bay!! Ready for a picturesque view and a dip in the ‘BIG pool’ we set our sails and glided along.

Turns out that seals basking in the sun with their flippers in the air look a lot like they have rolled over to say Hi as we sailed past! They were beautiful and really easy to see in the smoothed out glassy seas.

Captain Leups and Navs Matt gave us some detailed sail theory and Navigation Plan training. Turns out there is more than one way to skin a cat and we all learned a thing or two about a thing or two. Who would have thought us Salty Dogs would know all about points of sail and how to set a sail plan to get from A to B!

The afternoon routine of having lunch and then a deck nap siesta in the sun is great until Hitchy gets us all moving with Rope Races, finding all the lines for all the square sails (red watch knowing them all of course) we consolidated our learning from the previous day. The bonus round was a tough challenge resulting in brain freezes all over the ship as each team had to eat a Zooperdooper as fast as they could.. Fastest team (red watch) wins. Shout out to Lucy for her impeccable Zooperdooper eating skills.

We then anchored at the unreal beach of Wineglass Bay, with all Youthies ready for a swim and some ‘pool’ fun we all got ready and swung right in. With many back flops on the rope swing, and many laughs to be had, we all froze in the Tasmanian waters together. We can definitely say that the rope swing was the real winner today with everyone getting amongst it.

We are looking forward to our first night at anchor in the voyage so far! We have been sailing every night! Youthies are able to take lead of some watches on their own and truly showcase some of the skills that they have learnt.

With an exciting night ahead of us and hopefully lots of sleep we are ecstatic for the days ahead of us and looking forward to many wins for red watch to achieve.

Yours Aye, Simoné and Aiden +

Latitude/Longitude:

42 09.9S / 148 18.2E

Conditions:

Weather: Sunny Wind: 10kn NE Temp: 21C