Spirit of Adventure

My name is Anika Edginton and at the 2022 Otaki College senior prizegiving I was lucky enough to be awarded the XOtaki Alumni Trust Stuart and Mary Pritchard Spirit of Adventure Scholarship, which enabled me to partake in a 10-day voyage alongside 40 other young people from across New Zealand. The voyage was set in the beautiful Hauraki Gulf, and over these ten days, I learned tons of new skills, made friends from across the country, and pushed myself to try new things. 

I started my voyage at the Princes Wharf in Auckland, and despite being nervous I was so excited to meet everyone. We began boarding at 2pm and then stocked up the boat with what felt like enough food for an entire year. That night we did some icebreaker activities while sailing out to Motu Ihe. That evening all of the trainees collaborated to determine what we wanted to get out of the trip, and which activities we could do to aid this.

Every day we were assigned to different cleaning/ prep stations, and after breakfast, we would do our jobs for the day. We set the sails every day. At the start, it was very overwhelming as there was much to learn. After all the jobs were finished we would begin our mission. On day 3 we sailed to Mansion House Bay on Kawau Island, which is such a strange juxtaposition between the grandeur of the mansion and the feeling of being in the middle of nowhere. Later on, we sailed over to Goat Island, on our way there a crew member and I spotted a pod of dolphins swimming alongside the boat. One of the things we had listed on day 1 was swimming with dolphins and despite being so scared we jumped overboard. Unfortunately, they disappeared, but we had a plan. We readied the rafts and after anchoring the ship and all of the crew and trainees began paddling towards Goat Island. On the way there the dolphins came back and everyone jumped into the water. It was absolutely magical, for an hour or so we swam with the dolphins, hearing the high pitched ringing of them talking and watching them curiously dive through and around us. They were so close that you could touch them. This was definitely a highlight of my trip, to interact with the natural world from a place of admiration and respect, and see the pureness of life existing.  However, it made me feel for them, and their environment which we continue to pollute. 

On day 5 we finally had some proper wind, so we did lots of sailing. Throughout the entirety of the trip, we were learning how to hoist, set, and stow all of the different sails so that on day 9 'Trainee Day' we could sail the ship on our own.

Trainee day!!  Halfway through day 8 is the official handover, where the amazing crew helped us elect a captain and then left us to sort the rest out.  Katie was Captain, I was First Mate, Melissa was Second Mate, Angi was the Engineer, James and Liam were the Navigators, and Bede and Georgie Rose were the Cooks. We had a great team, and our first job was to make a plan for the following day.

Our approach was very diplomatic in that we opened up the floor to everyone to share their opinions, which was more of a challenge than we had initially expected. I think that we all learned a lot in trying to meet in the middle of what we could actually achieve in our time frame. Day 9, we were in full swing of Trainee Day, and the morning started off smoothly with everyone working together setting sails and doing jobs. Our navigators had set the course and Katie had us moving toward our handover destination. Trainee day proved to be more difficult than expected, we arrived at our destination late so there wasn't any time to swim even though it was one of the hottest days yet. It really showed us how difficult it is to run a ship and organise everyone onboard.

And just like that it was day 10. We woke to a great big moon setting over the beautiful Hauraki Gulf. We had bags to pack, cleaning to do, and showers to have. 

For anyone who is thinking about going on to the Spirit of Adventure, I couldn't recommend it more. I feel truly privileged to have had this experience. If you are looking to strengthen your leadership, communication, and collaboration skills and make friendships to last a lifetime this is for you. It wasn't without its highs and lows but the highs far outweighed the lows.  My thanks to the XAlumni Trust and particularly to Stuart and Mary Pritchard for making this fantastic experience possible.