Day 4 – V07/25, Gladstone to Cairns

The Youth Crew are officially taking responsibility for the Captain’s Log – time to hear how the voyage is going straight from the source!

STS Young Endeavour had a pretty busy night last night. Red Watch was up early at 2345 and was met with light rain, strong swell and 25 knots of wind. They had an exciting and eventful watch before handing over to White Watch at 0345 in the morning. Although they had much of the same weather, they went about their duties with high spirits and laughter. 0700 then came around with Kingy cooking up everyone a wonderful breakfast (hot breakfast, bacon, eggs, fruit platters and continental). It was then off to Morning Brief at 0900 where we heard from the Nav about the Whitsunday Islands and the reason behind saying Port and Starboard from ‘Salty’. Tacking Stations followed soon after and we all fought strong South Easterly winds with all our might as we learnt more about the other watches positions during Tacking.

At 1140 we dropped anchor of Hook Island. A gorgeous island, even if it was still raining up on deck. Most of us then played some card games out of the rain or rested in our bunks for a little while. 1300 was time for another round of rope races which featured a ‘fruit off’ between the watches. At 1430 4 Youthies braved the winds to climb and cast loose on the Mainsail and Topgallant – a little scary but lots of fun! After that the Youth Crew gathered for 3 Way Chat Demonstrations (a game designed to help us to get to know each other better). The Youth Crew then spent the afternoon in their groups learning about each other. After dinner it was time to present in front of everyone, where we had to pretend to be one of the other Youthies and tell the group about themselves/ourselves (the charades were really fun). We ended the night with lots of laughter and smiles before we settled into Anchor Watches

Jarrod A