On Sunday 10 May this year the Spirit of New Zealand slipped its moorings and sailed into the Hauraki Gulf with 39 teenagers between 14 and 16, 3 teachers, a permanent crew of 6 and 5 volunteers aboard.
The students included pupils from St Andrew’s College in Christchurch, Mahurangi College in Warkworth, Auckland’s Sacred Heart, Rotorua’s Western Heights and 9 from Mercury Bay Area School (MBAS).
The Spirit of Adventure Trust sails their training ship The Spirit of New Zealand which focuses on providing sail training and life skills for young people at sea. This was voyage number 943. This indicates decades of service by the Trust to the youth of New Zealand.
The 9 MBAS students were accompanied by their PE teacher Jaime and participated fully in all the activities on the ship.
The students on the ship were divided into watches with a teacher and or a watch assistant. I was fortunate enough to volunteer as a watch assistant on this voyage.
A typical day started at 0630 with a dip in the ocean followed by breakfast and a Trust ceremony called ‘Colours’ where the students took it in turn to perform a karakia, raise the ships flag to the sound of 8 ‘bells’, read out the days weather forecast and provide an inspirational ‘thought of the day’.
The whole team then mucked in with cleaning the entire ship and preparing vegetables and assisting the cook in the galley. The standard of food on the ship is superb and I suspect we all put on a kilo or so.
Each watch was then assigned a sail station either the fore deck, midships, the main or the mizzen where they quickly learned how to raise and lower the sails and generally sailed a square-rigged sailing ship.
Highlights included rafting out to a number of Gulf Islands, climbing to the top of one of the ship’s masts, learning how to tie knots and spotting a large pod of common dolphins that caused a great deal of excitement.
Five days later the Spirit returned to port and welcoming family members. It was fantastic to see how much each student had thrived away from family, friends and their screens.
MBAS’s Jade commented ‘It was amazing! If anyone ever gets the chance to do it they should’; Beau ‘loved every second of it’; Milan, ‘I loved every second of it and my favourite was climbing the mast’; Abby ‘can’t wait to look at all the photos’; Skye ‘so much fun, loved meeting everyone and doing the morning swims’; Caleb ‘very fun and recommend it to everyone’; Liam ‘It pushed me out of my comfort zone and I enjoyed all of it, everyone should give it a go’; Barnaby ‘it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I wished I could do it again’; Kaylah ‘The crew were so nice and made the experience fun’.
