Day 8 – Command Day!

After a night of hour long anchor watches, the youthies were woken up by the crackling speakers playing ‘Go Your Own Way’ and our way was up to the deck. Once we had all dragged ourselves out of bed we were prepared for the day by some early morning pilates led by our resident salty sea dog, Karsen. A sweet treat of danishes was just what we needed after the stretches. Ahead of command day officially beginning our elected command team undertook an activity called Opposites. This allowed the youthies to ask the staffies questions about their roles on the ship.

At 1000 everyone gathered at midships for the keys and control of the ship to be given to the youthies, beginning our 24 hour command day! All the staffies celebrated their ‘holiday’ by donning Christmassy outfits and jumping into the water from the side of the ship. Our Captain Jason was given a list of tasks that the crew needed to complete over the next 24 hours. Navigator Anthony led a team to recover our navigation instructions, which had been hidden ashore… Somewhere! Our only clues to it’s location was a cryptic message, which we had to decipher. Due to the staff navigator not being precise enough and Anthony being too precise, it took some time. Once we had all of our instructions we made a plan for the order of the command duration. After a delicious lunch of wraps prepared by our youthie master chefs we undertook our first big mission, laying aloft with as many youthies as we could. With everyone perched on the yards, we put our best smiles on for the coolest group photo any of us have ever been in. Once we were safely back on deck, Willie the man conducted rope races (testing youthie and staffie knowledge of the ship) that may give Dan the Man a run for his money. After a short siesta we took on the next challenge of constructing a ‘hammock’ that could safely support all of the youth crew. Our masterpiece was a slightly sketchy web of random ropes strung up around midships. But it did hold all of us and a few staffies (who proceeded to ‘help’ untie it and managed to make a massive spaghetti of ropes for us to untangle, thanks TJ and Simon).

Our amazing youthie master chefs surprised us with a Christmas dinner complete with decorations and music to match. The feast consisted of pork, crackling, lamb cutlets, tropical chicken, mashed potatoes, pumpkin, roast apple, peas and gravy. To top it off we had pavlova, ice-cream, custard and Christmas pudding. Amazing job to Nick, Xena and Will, we look forward to breakfast. We weighed anchor at 1900 and are currently on our way out of the bay to hit our navigational waypoints overnight. There is a deck party planned for when it gets dark (but don’t tell the staffies, its our creative surprise). We will conduct our normal night watches overnight with some possible interrupted sleep for tacking stations and will reach our destination by tomorrow morning.
Signing out for the night, Sienna, Charlotte, and Jason.

Hey Mum, Dad and Sara,
Hope everything is going well at home and work, and you are all doing well. I hope you had a great birthday weekend Sara. Cant wait to see you all soon I miss and love you all lots.
love Sienna

Happy birthday Mum <333 – Love, Scarlett

Love you Barbara and Warren, Anthony
Love you Mum and Kaylee, Hope you’re having as much fun as I am – Jason

Hey Mum, Dad, Amelia and Lucy, having lots of fun, see you soon. – love, Charlotte