Our Youth Leadership Program at Pennant Hills High School

Our Guest Speaker, Noah Binet is in Year 12 at Pennant Hills High School and was selected late last year to join the “Young Endeavour” for a 10 day sail as a leadership training program which our club has sponsored for the past 15 years.

Noah was quick to thank the club for giving him the opportunity to participate in such a wonderful program. Noah advised that the “Young Endeavour” is an Australian Tall Ship, built by Brooke Marine and given to Australia by the British Government in 1988 as a gift to celebrate Australia’s bicentenary of colonisation. Although operated by the Royal Australian Navy, the ship is primarily used to provide Tall Ship Training to Australian Youth. The ship usually has 30 youth supplementing the small naval compliment on board on a voyage. 

            Noah’s trip involved sailing from Sydney Harbour and heading north towards Nelson Bay and Broken Bay and then back to Sydney Harbour. Unfortunately for Noah and other members of the crew, the weather produced lots of rain and according to some sources, some of the roughest seas ever recorded on a “Young Endeavour” trip. Fortunately they had good supply of sea sickness food of Saos and bananas. Despite his battles with sea sickness, Noah managed to acquire a sound knowledge of the ship’s rigging and fully understood the positioning of the 10 sails and their purpose, and, like all good sailors, had his fair share of being up on the rigging during extremely windy and wet conditions.

            It was also apparent that Noah and the other members of the crew enjoyed their trip and managed to participate in other activities, including going on shore with a raiding party to “capture“ 60 people to sing the National Anthem and to be part of the themed dinner party, in their case, the Italian Mafia. Noah certainly had a “mixed” crew including some from Tasmania, Queensland, Victoria and Scone, NSW. There were 12 girls and 15 boys.

            Other students who were unsuccessful in applying for this opportunity were taken on a day sail on the “James Craig” Tall Ship out of Darling Harbour.