JESSICA'S JOURNEY !

"There is great meaning in life for those who are willing to journey."
Jessica recently went on a ten day voyage aboard 'The Spirit of Adventure'. It turned out to be one of those "life-changing experiences" and so I'll hand over to her, to tell you all about it!




Jess here! Like mum said...I went away on the 'Spirit of New Zealand' for a 10 day voyage and it was AMAZING. The longest 10 days of my life and I had such a good time!
The picture above is some of my "watch group" (we were put into four) - Starboard A. On board were about 36 teenagers between 15-18 years old; both boys and girls, and by the end of the trip everyone knew each other and I made some really good friends.

I met people from all over New Zealand, as well as some teenagers from Germany and Denmark which was really interesting.



This is where I lived for 10 days!
The beds weren't the comfiest I've ever slept on (a roll of canvas you tucked away during the day and pulled out at night) but they weren't half as bad as I thought they'd be.
During the voyage I: learnt about sailing (we did lots of rope pulling and moving of masts etc.), did heaps of scrubbing of the deck and hosing down sails, had to wake up at 6:30 am every morning to leap into the sea (wake up call!), went tramping in Great Barrier, had a barbeque on an island...wow we just did heaps!



The dynamics of a ship are more complicated than I thought, and especially on the first few days it was a pretty big challenge figuring everything out- what rope pulled what, and if you untied this, would that fall down?
We had some pretty diverse weather as well (if you noticed the first picture) with REALLY rolling seas and rain and freezing wind on the first couple of days.
Some of the trainees (what we we were called) got quite seasick, but I was ok.
The sun came out though, and it was hot enough for all 36+ teenagers to fall asleep all over the deck one afternoon.
It probably looked pretty funny to the crew (there were 8 of them and they were FANTASTIC).



I also (cliched as it sounds) learnt a lot about myself and other people during my time away.
One other thing I did, which was really intense (for me), was to climb all the way up to the white part on the front mast of the ship...if you can see it then I touched that!
Anyway, enough about my adventure and back to mum...but I had the time of my life on board the Spirit of New Zealand and thank you so very much, mum and dad for making it possible (cheesy but true) =)