Spirit of Adventure

I’d say my experience on the voyage was pretty life changing and I couldn’t be more proud of the person I've become after it.  I’ve gained a lot of confidence from this experience and I'd like to extend that throughout life because my peers inspired me to do my best and that I could achieve anything if I push myself.  

It's been interesting meeting people from different places around the world and getting to know their background and where they're from. I had the opportunity to become friends with everyone on voyage 822 and have grown to love and appreciate them just as much as they gave me.  

At the start of Voyage 822 I wasn’t sure about the whole ‘ship’ thing, I wasn’t positive about staying on a boat for 10 days either. A couple of days before it started I was terrified because I knew nobody and was worried what people would think of me. I had so many doubts but reassured myself that I could do this and that this was for me and only me. If I went home before the voyage even started then I would regret it so bad. I have made the most of my time on the voyage 822 because I've now realised that I want more than what life has to offer me, I want to be able to chase after what I want and not have it handed to me for no reason. Because then I'll feel like I haven’t accomplished anything in life and I’ll feel like I have no purpose in life. 

Back down in Ōtaki I have no clue what I want to do when I become older or what the next chapter of my life will be, but I feel like all the friendships I made with people that they helped indicate that for me. I feel good about myself for once and I learnt tons of things on the voyage. I learnt that it’s alright to do things wrong because that’s how you learn new things. I learnt how to sail and work with a group of amazing people who wanted me involved in something. 

We had to wake up at 6:30 every morning and jump off the boat into the ocean and that was probably my least favorite part of the voyage because it was so early in the morning. I learnt how to sail, I didn’t know sailing could be so interesting. We even had a trainee day where us trainees ruled the ship for a day. I was one of the cooks along with a girl I met named Misty. It was so hard cooking for 37 people but I set my mind to the challenge and overcame what needed to be done. We were put into watches and did challenges against each other. I was in Port A and the other three teams were Port B, Starbid A and Starbid B. Each group was then put on night watch and we were put in pairs for 2 hour shifts all the way to 6:30 for our morning swim. Each pair sat in the wheelhouse and had to record all these different things like the wind speed and if the boat had drifted away from the anchor etc. Every 20 mins we also had to walk around the boat and look for anything coming our way. On the way to look for anything dangerous we then had to open the hatch and check if there was any smoke or fire coming from the engine to be safe. 

There were too many things to describe that were amazing and I couldn’t imagine it being any better than it was. I’ve learnt to enjoy life and to try new things whether it scares me or makes me have 2nd thoughts because I want my life to be epic. I don’t want my life to go downhill because of one mistake, I also got told that we can learn from our mistakes and try again till I get it right. That’s what I want life to be like so thank you Voyage 822 you will be missed and remembered. 

Keiontay Mulvay, Year 12