Since we spent Christmas in Toowoomba this year, Rachael wanted to head to the beach for New Years. Given we tried booking about a day before, almost everywhere at Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast were booked, and so we decided to stay inland a bit at Murwillumbah YHA. The area around there was great and there was awesome views from the deck of the Tweed River and Mt Warning.
On the drive down we stopped around the Palm Beach area and it was busy as.
So after finishing up my rotation in Brisbane, Rachael and I had a few days free to do some travel before moving up to Toowoomba.
The drive down south almost started off slow, with a major accident on the highway, but we managed to use the traffic layer on google maps to take a massive detour that meant we didn’t have to wait for hours for it to clear and made it down to the NSW border without wasting too much time.
After Byron, we quickly stopped by Lennox Heads for a squiz, where we also good to see some cool wildlife. There was a group of sea birds swooping an area where you could see fish jumping. There must have been dolphins or something scaring the fish and the birds were taking advantage of it.
From there we pretty much headed straight to our final destination, Coffs Harbour. Rachael really wanted to check it out since she had some work friends that had grown up there that must have given it rave reviews.
In the morning we did some harbour furls (neatly rolled up the square sails), then briefly headed out to sea so that we could come back again for all the family members on shore. We stayed up on the yards for the berthing, and fired cannon blasts as is tradition. The tradition being that by having everyone up on the yards, there is nobody to reload the cannons - and since they have already been fired the ship poses no threat.
On our last full day, we had a half day sail with local people with disabilities. It was very rewarding, although we went out past the heads so they could see some whales (we saw several) which caused a lot of them to get seasick.
I was part of the Youth Crew Theatre Crew, and we dressed up in the ship costumes and performed our nursery rhyme style shanties for the guests.
As I mentioned earlier, every morning the staff held a morning brief. One of our command day tasks was to host our own. Rick was our Nanna, Ash gave the long winded Nav talk, and I was Salty Seadog with the help of my assistant Emma. To show of our newly learned knot-tying skills - one task was to build a Hammock that could support the entire youth crew: When our 24 hours were up, the crew assessed how we had met each task.
Day 8 was command day - the day when control of the ship was handed over to us youth crew for 24 hours. At the handover we were given a list of various tasks to complete. From easy ones (don’t get sunburnt) to hard one’s (our navigation challenge).
One of our first tasks was to get a photo taken with all crew members aloft. I am on the topsail yard (middle), second from the left - next to the other Alex.
The weather was slightly improved once we got to the mainland, and were protected by Twofold Bay. We went ashore at Eden and went to visit the Eden Whale Museum, where they keep the skeleton of Old Tom, a killer whale that helped the fishermen lure in other whales and would share in the kill - eating the tongue and leaving the rest for the fishermen.
Somehow at the Dock waiting to get taken back to the ship I fell in the harbour, causing much amusement for everyone present.
We had a pretty chilled morning sailing on the sea, with a descent speed and good weather. After dinner this awesome looking cloud came.
Turns out awesome looking clouds like that mean there is a storm coming and we got smashed by some pretty intense weather and had to bring a lot of our sails down.
After that taking that video I got to climb to the topgallant yard to tie the gaskets (fold up the square sails), and while up there saw what was either a sun fish or manta ray come up next to the ship.
The previous night we had an anchor watch instead of our normal 4-hour shift in which only 3 people were on watch, and only for an hour so as to keep an eye on the boat and perform rounds.
In the afternoon we had sail theory, and were told the purpose of each of the sails and how they affect the ship’s movement. We spent the afternoon sailing around the bay, whilst watching all the nearby humpback whales.
