Smoko was soon over and after that it was taking it easy around the deck, not a lot happening so I ended up taking a nap on the tea chest down on the 18th century deck. Not the most comfortable place to sleep but pretty soon most of the chests were taken. Its amazing where you can sleep when you’re really tired.

About 30 min into that we got the call for free hands up to deck for maintenance, the railings and so on needed painting so it was up to us to sand the flaking paint back. Its bloody messy work and we were soon all covered in black dust. Our shift was 1600-1800 so I went for a quick shower to get the dust off then back up on deck in safety vest and harness. First up I was on safety rounds, this is where you check the heading, wind and sea conditions, then down below decks to check on the ship conditions. This include down to the 20th century decks to checks heads (are they overflowing etc?) and so on then engine room. One of the things we were to check was the bilge – how much water has seeped into the bottom of the boat. Normally it’s around 3″ but it was over 8″ so we fired up the bilge pump to reduce it. The pump is electric – no hand pump like in Cook’s day and is on a timer so you can turn it on and forget about it, by next safety check it should have been pumped out.

We planned to anchor in Zoe Bay on Hinchinbrook Island overnight, as we came into the bay we had to drop sails which kept us all busy, then dropped anchor. That was a bit full on, then I was back down to the 20th century deck. for kitchen duty. Basically we were there to wash and dry up, it was all hard work with 2 settings of over 50 people in a confined space.

All done and eventually we can relax. Next watch is anchor watch so it’s only one hour- we have 0100 – 0200, not too bad.