COMMAND DAY COMMENCES

Firstly I would like to say how honoured I am to have been given this position by my fellow crew members aboard the Young Endeavour. I have happily taken this position and with the advice and guidance of Captain Damien I have taken control of this wonderful ship.Our elections were over quickly on the Wednesday evening, taking just over an hour with decisive outcomes in each of the positions that required filling. Our Youth Command Crew consists of the following individuals; Navigator: Josh, Sail Master: Fran, Watch Officers: Dom, Amelia & Declan, Watch Leaders: Liam Matt & Sean and finally but certainly not least our Chefs: Claire, Nic and Maddie.Our morning on Thursday started with an at anchor swim, freezing cold water, whales around the boat and curious locals cruising past, it was a good way to start the day.Command day handover was awesome, we finally were finally being given the opportunity to sail the ship as we saw fit. The staff crew all seemed to thoroughly enjoy the occasion, entering centre stage at midships to the theme song “We’re all going on a summer holiday” and all dressed up in their “holiday” gear. As the music quietened I was called forth by Damien and presented with four items that all captain requires. The first was a sword, the second a parrot, the third a captain’s hat and the most humbling, the original spyglass that was presented with the ship for the 200th anniversary of Australia, as a gift from England and the Crown, needless to say that this spyglass will be guarded with my life.After handover we started off with a bit of a fun activity to start our command day on a happy note, each of the new watches “Sheep”, “Transformers” and “Sydney” had 5 minutes to impress the Chefs, Josh, Fran and I with a watch specific “War Cry”. The “Sheep” were successful, writing their humorous “War Cry” about sheep.We briskly moved onto command day briefs, the central theme revolved around respect, the crew needed to respect us as their elected leaders, that as the elected members we respected the positions we had been given, and the crew that had elected us to lead them through the challenges of our command day. That being said we were all looking forward to our day, all very eager to have as much fun and complete as many of our challenges as possible.Our challenges began with a massive success, with Task 6 being completed in stunning style. Our “Youth Crew Beach Assault Team” managed to convince many members of the general public along with an entire class of school children on an excursion from Brisbane to sing the Australian national anthem as the Australian flag was raised ashore “claiming” the beach as ours! With the successful beach assault, we had our Nav Instructions! During this point in time, a few of our enthusiastic crew made up our mid ships hammock, support all of our youth crew, and with that we had two challenges completed in swift succession.At the time of this being written, we have successfully weighed anchor, navigated through a portion of sea containing several obstacles and are currently passing through our second waypoint of success, 4 of which we have to pass through by 0900 tomorrow to succeed in commanding this amazing ship back on the route to Brisbane.Finally I will leave you with a quote I believe to have been originally spoken by Winston Churchill, but was spoken to me by my father before my first nationals sailing championships “If at first we don’t succeed, we will try, try, try again”.Ahoy there everyone,Youth Crew Captain Will