CLIENT: Youth Voyage
VOYAGE NUMBER: 20251130
FROM: Manly To: Sydney
POSITION: Coffs Harbour
DATE: 4 December 2025
REPORT: White Watch
We have had a very challenging journey to Coffs across Tuesday and Wednesday, where we non stopped sailed against the wind for 36 hours straight. We were getting 4-meter swells that rocked the ship like crazy. Then the engine trouble began. We planned to stop at Yamba to do repairs but saved around 6 or 7 hours by doing repairs on the way.
On Day 4 we woke up at the crack of dawn and had a shift at 12-4am. It was freezing cold, windy and dark. Fighting against falling asleep and throwing up, a couple of us managed to helm the boat a couple of times. Without a doubt, this has been some of the most difficult hours of our lives, but we persevered through endless seasickness until we finally docked at Coffs Harbour at around 21:00 hrs last night, were we all greatly enjoyed solid ground, and cool showers on shore.
Today a new skipper arrived to relieve the last one, so we can continue our voyage. We enjoyed a lovely breakfast that we could all finally keep inside our systems and not over the edge into the sea. We then made our way on shore to get some shopping done that mainly consisted of more seasickness medication and new water bottles as “someone” vomited on the windward side, and it blew on our lovely water bottles.
An upside was during our tough journey across the open water, we spotted a couple of dolphins and we also trauma bonded. Over the past day or so, we had the whackiest conversations about the most random topics and learnt a lot about each other. We had another rope competition involving the reef and figure 8 knot, where the White Watch may not be the fastest at tying knots, but we sure are the loudest at encouraging others. Gabbie, Taylor, Stephanie, Hanbee, Hamza, Aaron