Command Day & Light Winds

Ahoy shipmates,This morning while staff crew changed over headsails the youth crew continued preparations for their command day. At midday, once the brief handover ceremony had been completed, the new command team soon took charge and had us sailing from anchor. The youth crew’s mission is to sail from North West Bay around to the eastern side of Wedge Island, there to anchor and send a boat crew ashore to find a set of instructions for the next part of their challenge, the instructions hidden in a cave near the beach. Unfortunately, unlike yesterday, the winds initially abandoned us and it was only with the use of engines that we managed to clear the listless bay and find some breeze a short distance to seaward. Apart from one other short period of motoring to clear us from a dead spot in the wind the youth crew have handled the ship well and most recently have safely brought the ship to anchor. As I write their boat crew is paddling furiously against the wind to gain the beach.Join me tomorrow and we will see how our intrepid adventurers are faring.Yours Aye,Captain BobYouth Crew entry;Command Day: Part 1Today marked the third phase of our voyage, when the staff gave the youth crew the tick of approval and handed over the helm at 1200 to take command for the following 24hrs. We were given a mission by the staff, with our first objective to set sail from anchor and head to a given point at Wedge Island. However, there was no wind and we made no headway, ultimately ending up turning around in circles for a good couple of hours on what seemed like a plate of glass. Awesome��_ After the couple hours of no wind or waves, we called on the Captain to start the engines and give us a kick, finally motoring out to sea and into some wind. Finding some light winds, we turned off the engines – perhaps prematurely, as pretty soon again we were spinning on another plate of glass. Clearly this called for more engines, so once again we ended up motoring out into some real wind where we were finally able to fill the sails and make some headway. At this point we tacked, and began heading to our given destination around the south east point of Wedge Island where we skilfully managed to anchor just off the beach. Our mission was to go and retrieve further instructions hidden in a cave on the beach, so off we sent a crew of six to paddle to land and search the cave. Paddling like troopers and tackling the wind that had finally decided to come to the party; our designated paddling team made it to land, retrieved the instructions and quickly made it back to the ship. Props to the team for taking the challenge head on, and we hope your arms forgive you sometime soon. All this had to be done by sunset, in this we succeeded. From there our second set of instructions led us to again set sail from anchor, head out from the island to head past a dangerous set of rocks, and tack on our way to the second destination of Thistle Island. Making good headway into the night, as 0000 clocked over, we performed another tack before handing over to the second half of the youth crew team for Command Day Part 2. Special mention to the amazing dinner prepared by the team in the galley; serving up some tantalising Mediterranean mains, followed by a dessert sure to sate any sweet tooth. Who knew so much could be done with a few cans of condensed milk and a couple of bananas.YC Captain/XO: Sam and Gin