We had the guts shift from 12-4 in the morning. It is difficult to navigate at night when there is no land in sight and lights just come out of nowhere. When you are on watch you have a watch officer (Dion from the staff crew was ours), someone on the helm, lookouts looking for lights/hazards and the rest of the watch is just there in case something needs to happen with the sails.
First thing every morning we were woken by a song being played over the loudspeaker. On most days we had to come up on deck and do laps of the ship until everyone was up. Then every morning there is a morning brief.
At morning brief we heard the plan for the day from our Sailmaster Kristy, a quote from Captain Damien, an always long talk from the Navigator Matt about our current position and where we were going, as well as a visit from Nanna (Mick the Engineer in a dress and wig) who raided the berths for clothes/stuff left on the floor (and not neatly put away in our lockers like they are meant to be) to be shown off to everyone.
I spent the morning exploring Sydney, but after getting very fed up caring a 12kg backpack around decided to head towards the Gardens Point Navy Base early, which was our point of departure. My first impression of the boat was that it was a lot smaller than I was expecting.
Since I was a few hours early, I spent some boring time waiting and eventually ran into Lauren who was also on the youth crew.
