HMB Endeavour at anchor in Zoe Bay

Day started at 0100 with a 1 hour watch on anchor with Bronwyn, Sam and Lucy. At anchor the watch is always easy, you only have an hour on watch and there isn’t much to do. Sit around on the deck, keep warm. Do the safety rounds. Easy.

After an hour on watch it was back to bed and slept through until 0700ish when I was again woken by the sound of the watch cleaning the deck. There wasn’t a call so I just laid in the hammock until breakfast was called, I like this. Once again breakfast was great, certainly being fed well on the trip.

Nice Beach

Up on deck and we’re all called for a meeting. Today we will be going over to Zoe Bay for a day’s swimming, so it’s a hurried happy hour so that everyone can get ready. We were on the 18th century deck so it was just a sweep done and polish the ship’s bell.

Into swimmers and the foremast was called up as first to go over to the beach. We donned life jackets and grabbed our gear and once the safety boat was in the water we were on our way. We had Elly on our trip and as she’s ships steward and photographer we got to do a lap around the ship first while she photographed her from all sides. It was great for us to get to see it in a magnificent location from all sides. After this we were dropped off on the beach, and it was absolutely pristine. You could see the damage from the recent cyclone but the beach looked untouched by humans. Lots of slip-slop-slap while we waited for the rest of the foremast watch to join us, then we headed off to find a waterfall. Bronwyn and Fiona know the area well and soon they had led us to a swimming hole and waterfall which was absolutely magnificent. It flowed down into a pool and we all dived in. The water was absolutely freezing but once you were in it got a little better.

Waterfall on Hinchinbrook Island

The rocks were very slippery with moss, but we managed to climb the rocks near the water fall and had a bit of fun bombing and diving in, playing with the new underwater cameras and photographing the fish. The cold got a bit much and soon we were drying off and making our way back to the beach. Jeremy had prepared a lunch of bread rolls so I grabbed a ham roll, apple and muesli bar. The other watches were all off the ship but all too soon it was time for us to return to the Endeavour.

Once back we heard that there might be a chance of getting to swim off the ship, so we stayed in our swimmers however it wasn’t until 1530 that the rest of the ship’s crew were back on board and by then it was too late. Once the safety boat was stowed, all hands were called to deck with safety harness, we weighed anchor and planned to set sail. Volunteers were again called to climb the shrouds so I again jumped at the opportunity, despite my shakes from last time.

This time we had to go much higher as we were to unfurl the topsail. Up past the futtocks and past the platform, soon I was hanging over the topsail yard arm fumbling with knots and trying not to shake. It’s much harder than it looks. The knots were tight but eventually I got them undone and the topsail was free, tidied up the rope and was on my way down again.

After that it was onto the sails and get the ship underway. We didn’t have to tidy the ropes because we were called to dinner – fish and chips, ice cream and pudding. Yum 🙂

Bouncy and his ukele

Our next watch is 2000 until 0000, I don’t think I’ll have a sleep now, rather I’ll wait til the watch is done and should sleep soundly after that. Better grab a coffee before then. At the moment the rest of the watch are having fun playing UNO so I’ll join in with them for a while. Bouncy is playing Over the Rainbow on his ukulele. On the last night we have sod’s opera where he did to do some sort of performance, it might be a sing along or something. I’ve also been asked to assist drawing up the ship’s voyage, basically its a picture of our journey like maps of old with little illustrations etc. It should be great fun. I’ve tried to incorporate as much from our trip as I can, although we’re only half way so I don’t really have a lot to work on at the moment. There’s little biplane from the joy flight that buzzed us, cannons, moon rise over the water etc.

Anyway, that’s all for today. I’m off to find some coffee and then join the watch for cards.