Same Journal entries from the Voyage, just in digital form

Before the Voyage

I packed the things I usually pack since travelling the world a year, plus a couple of extras that were on the packing list specifically from South Passage. So packing was fairly simple, even though I hadn't packed in a couple of months — it was a little different packing an army duffel bag. I was a little scared the food was going to be bad because most of the school camps I have been on had really bad food. One or two nights of slop for dinner is fine, but a week on the other hand is a completely different story. I'm a bit excited and a tiny bit nervous but mainly excited. The weather has been quite wet the last couple of days, so fingers crossed for good weather on the voyage.

Other watch leaders: Dale and Stefan

Day 1

I woke up at 5:40am because I had to be at the train station at 7:15am. We ended up leaving the house at 7:00 because of me pottering, which in hindsight I shouldn't have been doing, but I was doing it because I knew there were things I would not be able to do for the rest of the week. Luckily I was not the last person there.

We set out around 7:30 and started the drive to Manly Marina, where the boat was waiting for us. We arrived in Manly at between 9:15 and 9:30. Then got introduced to all the crew. I got put with Ed in the red group (the crew member and red group leader).

I forgot to mention that when we arrived at Manly the bus driver forgot to put the handbrake on, so we almost died before we even got on the boat. The bus started to roll away with all of us in it. Jyden quickly put it on.

We sailed quite a bit on the first day, we anchored near Moreton Banks. We sailed between St Helena Island and Green Island. The weather was pretty miserable — it was raining and we basically got soaked. There were wet clothes everywhere. I think everyone was questioning their life decisions. I was really tired from the first day but there were 10 people all around my bed having a chat — I did feel a little annoyed but thankfully Ed and Stefan saved the day and told them to shhhh, which worked.

Day 2

We woke up at 1am to go on night watch for the first time and learned about the longitude and latitude of the world and how to read the map, as well as the coordinates. We learned what our duties were on night watch. Then went back to bed ready for the next day.

We all woke up at 6:30am to a bugle, which was funny.

After waking up we got on deck to learn some things by 7. We were moving south towards the Gold Coast, with first and second breakfast served while underway by the amazing cook Lousie. Unfortunately the weather was still bad and there were showers most of the day. There were so many wet clothes hung all through the cabin. I then had a shift at 10 to 12 where we continued to learn how to sail and the captain put a patch on the rip in our sail. I got a bit of time under the deck and that was the first time I had of just chill time. We also learned how to tie two knots — the figure eight and the reef knot. I had the 6 till 8pm shift and we ended up motoring through the main channel all the way to South Port and anchored near the Gold Coast Seaway.

On shift we have different jobs that change every couple of minutes, my favourite jobs on shift are doing helm with the captain, Phil, and doing the navigation at the stand-by helm. I found the night-time sailing cool — when we were on our other jobs we were in charge of looking out for beacons and boats. We saw a lot of boats that had been abandoned and had no lights on. I forgot to mention that we stopped at an island before entering the main channel because we were waiting for high tide.

Something I forgot to mention on the first day was that I got appointed red bowline, but to be quite honest I don't think I was that good at that job on the first day because I knew absolutely zero people's names, because most of them are from Year 10, some kids are 14 and I'm almost 19 — that's why I'm kind of excited to leave school, because all my friends and people I know are younger than me. I also had no idea where everything was. I was also really struggling to read the note cards because of my severe dyslexia, and I feel a bit ashamed to admit that I'm struggling, because if I tell someone 'oh, I'm dyslexic', they will say 'oh, I'm dyslexic' or 'I know someone with dyslexia' and it wasn't that bad.

Day 3

I had an early morning shift at 4 till 5am, then we just stayed up because everyone else woke up at 5:30 because we needed to get into the open ocean. We started to prepare the ship so everything was tidy and ready for sailing. I got to go in the anchor locker to help put the anchor chain neatly in its area. I was a little bit scared of going in, and it being claustrophobic, but it was actually quite cozy.

Anyway, we motored for a bit in the main channel and then, once we got to the Gold Coast Seaway and made it out, the waves really started to pick up, the sails were up and the boat was really kicked around, and we had 11 more hours of it. We left at 6am and by 9 basically the whole crew was out with seasickness — even the teacher was throwing up. It looked like a bunch of dead people on deck. Somehow I was one of the three people from our school that didn't get sick. Then we finally got around Moreton Island into the bay at 5pm.

Day 4

People were feeling way better and we were just practising tacking and jibing. We got to go out at Tangalooma and had a swim to shore. The dinghy took like 30 minutes to get everyone to shore. I chose to be on the first dinghy because I was cold and wet — I also saw some more weather heading our way. As we got to the boat it started pouring, we had a deck shower and quickly went inside. I called dibs on the shower and had a nice warm shower. It was fast though, since we were on a boat and there was a limited supply of water. After everyone was dry and on board we went back out in the bay again to practice for the next day, where we would take control of the ship and sail us back home.

We ended up seeing a pod of dolphins and one stingray that wanted to learn how to fly. I didn't see it fly, I just saw the splash that happened after it hit the water. We also got some binoculars from the crew to have a look around. Then we went back to Tangalooma for the last night on board this magnificent ship.

Lousie cooked us another amazing dinner, which was this slow-cooked meat with pumpkin and potatoes. For some reason people weren't a big fan of the pumpkin — I thought it was nice. Stefan, one of the other watch leaders and volunteers, loved pumpkin, so everyone was giving it to him. I think he ended up eating like seven pieces of pumpkin, and they weren't little pieces either. Stefan was a bit of a character and everyone loved him.

Day 5

Oh, I forgot to mention that before everyone went to bed they got us to choose our captain, sailing master and navigator. We ended up choosing Joshua to be captain, Maxwell to be sailing master and William to be navigator. Our mission for the day was to get from Tangalooma to the buoy in between St Helena Island and Green Island. We had a South Passage points system, and you would gain or lose points for doing certain things. You would lose points for being early or late to the buoy. Harley, though, said to us that he doesn't give a fuck about their point system, and if they got us there early they would get a thousand Harley points because he had an AFL game he had to be at on the Gold Coast on time.

The sail was pretty good but I did think I was going to die for a second, out of one where the boat went on the 90-degree angle and it started pouring ice-cold rain — I was just holding on for dear life. I was pretty lucky that I had something very stable to hold onto, some people weren't so lucky and were hanging onto some rigging that was around — they almost fell off, it was a miracle everyone stayed on the ship.

Well, we all made it back to Manly and I also tied 20 knots for 100 points for our team. I think in the end we got 500 points, so yay.