Young crew learn life skills sailing Windeward Bound
Tall ship Windeward Bound sails Queensland’s coast with young crew
Posted on 25.07.2023
Teenager Lily Watson is the first to admit she spends too much time on her phone, but she’s hopeful a voyage on a “pirate” ship will help with that.
The 17-year-old is one of 10 young people currently aboard Windeward Bound, a youth development vessel that’s sailed from Hobart to the central Queensland industrial city of Gladstone for the voyage.
Ms Watson, whose experience on the water is limited to one ferry ride as a child, wanted to take up the challenge so she could learn how to be more independent.
“I’ve been trying to stop my phone addiction. I think this will make it much easier to stop being on my phone all the time,” she said.
“I just want to be out outdoors more, and in nature more, and just not be inside all the time. Just to do something different.”
With the help of Rotary, the brigantine-type tall ship regularly takes young people on voyages to learn about sailing and other life skills.
“It’s drawing them out of their comfort zone,” said the ship’s captain, Sarah Parry.
Teenagers learn to work the ship and overcome challenges like sea sickness.
They also lose access to their mobile phones.
“As a teenager they don’t often recognise what their capabilities are. This is a way of showing them that they can actually overcome what might seem to them, at the time, enormous obstacles,” she said.
“Teenagers love challenges.”
Purpose built ‘pirate ship’
Currently working as an apprentice chef in a café at Gladstone Marina, Ms Watson said the ship cast a very striking image among the white modern boats and yachts.
“It’s very cool, very old [looking], and very nice,” she said.
The round trip along the coast from Gladstone will no doubt drum a fair degree of independence into its 10 new crewmates.
Ms Parry said young people loved it, often thinking it was a pirate ship.
“Every time Pirates of the Caribbean comes out we get a whole swag of people that want to come and have a look,” she said.
It was the 1960s when Ms Parry, a former member of the navy, saw sail training work happening in America and Europe.
She thought it would be great to bring a similar concept to Australia.
Having searched for an existing vessel to use in the 1980s she found nothing suitable and decided to build one instead, modelling it off a vessel built in Boston in 1848.
“We laid the keel in 1990 and she was launched in 1996, started sailing in 1998, and we’ve been doing this ever since,” she said.
“It’s a very simple vessel to operate, but it’s much more complex than a yacht or a power vessel.”
Almost 6,000 young Australians have sailed on the ship, which has travelled hundreds of thousands of nautical miles throughout Australia and New Zealand.
It came to Gladstone thanks to Rotary to celebrate the organisation’s 100th birthday in Queensland and will return to Tasmania in the coming weeks.
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