CLIENT: Bronze Youth Voyage
VOYAGE NUMBER: 20240504
FROM: Manly To: Manly
DATE: 4 May 2024
POSITION: Horseshoe Bay, Peel Is
REPORT: White Watch
Our journey started early this morning, boarding at 8am. After a quick tour of the ship, we returned to the deck to take photos with South Passage’s new life jackets with the local member for parliament. Following this, our parents wistfully waved as off, both happy to see us gone and nervous for our voyage. A particular highlight white watch was team member Mikayla’s dad untying the ship from the dock.
One of the first tasks we completed was untying and raising (hoisting?) the sails. All watches did this, and our designated sail was the foresail. As bosun, I got to delegate tasks to the other members of the watch, which we all completed efficiently as our first team task on the boat.
After this, it was time for what everyone was waiting for: lunch. As our watch was directly after lunch, white watch got to eat first, much to the dismay of blue and red watch. Luckily, we were able to sneak a quick game of Uno before our watch, in which lots of +2 and +4 cards were added.
White watch’s first solo watch was from 12 – 2pm where we got to learn how to tack and had the opportunity to rotate through all of the watch positions. Whilst we enjoyed all of these positions, a particular favourite of white watch was the “helm” position, wherein we were able to steer the sheep, referring to a compass to ensure we were steering the ship in the right direction. We became well versed in tacking as due to choppy weather, we had to change the direction of the sail so that the wind would blow into them and steer us on course.
After our watch, we had several hours of free time, which we commenced by bonding with the members of red watch, as blue watch was on watch. One of the ways in which we bonded was through swapping lollies with fruits and passing them through the skylight (yes we stood on the table – in socks). We spent 10 – 20 minutes of our free time practicing our knots for the knot competition that was meant to happen that night. At 3:40pm all watches came back up.
The day was calm, slight showers, great food and lovely chef. The crew had a great amount of patience for us even as we struggled our way through s learning sailing terms, techniques and practices. When not on watch, we bonded with people from the other watches, through chatting, playing card games and trading fruit for lollies through the skylight. At the end of the day we went to the beach, leaving the ship behind and having a ride in a dingy. The water was freezing but we still managed to have a lot of fun.