Spank Me, Baby!

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Just returned from a three-day, three-night sailing adventure on a boat called Spank Me. It was just that much fun 😊

We went from Airlie Beach, which is this tiny little beach town whose only purpose in life is to book everyone in the city on sailing trips for as much money as they can get. Very cute and not a whole hell of a lot to do except sit by the lagoon (which is a giant manmade pool, since you can't swim in the water due to "stingers," the deadly irukanji jellyfish). So basically if you can't handle sitting by the lagoon anymore, you go sit on a boat. There's a lot of sitting around involved in Airlie Beach holidays.

Anyways we had such an awesome time. We met the loveliest two girls, Terri and Katherine, who kept us company on our 25M Maxi along with 21 other passengers and 4 crew. The first day we sailed to Whitehaven Beach, where we were booted from our original spot by a a film crew. It's just that perfect, that they felt it only needed Kate Hudson to make it more pristine.

After that we sailed on to a place called Mackerel Bay, where we got some super cool snorkeling and diving in. We saw a ton of fishies, coral, and like five stingray. Neato. We then battened down the hatches for the night and watched the stars for a long time.

Next day brought us to the Great Barrier Reef. As I mentioned before, this is on my Top Ten Lifetime Experiences list now. You simply cannot imagine how cool it is. Our boat moored to this anchor point which was literally in the middle of nowhere - you could barely see the Whitsunday Islands on the horizon. When we got there, Eeyore (a friendly Napoleon Double-Headed Wrasse who was enormouse) came up with his posse of scary and fierce giant trevelli. They spent the entire time hovering around our boat, possibly b/c the crew feeds them every time (which is quite an experience). Tom, our diving instructor, even got to pet the wrasse. So cool. We dove & snorkeled two places, the Stepping Stones and Manta Ray Dropoff. The Stepping Stones was classic coral "bommies" - giant rocks covered in all kinds of coral and fish. The water was incredibly clear - you could see for probably 30+m, which just made it all the more spectacular. Mantra Ray Dropoff was crazy - after swimming through this itty bitty little cave which aws just wide enough for one person to go through at a time, you emerged on the other side to a sheer dropoff to the bottom of the ocean (probably 60M down). you couldn't really see it there, so it was super spooky to just have this wall of coral & fish and then a vast nothing beneath you and aruond you. And then add about six black & white tipped reef sharks. I really hope Kate's underwater photos come out well because the experience was too much for words. Freaking awesome.

The next day was more snorkeling at Blue Pearl Bay before motoring on home (there wasn't enough wind to sail). I got to used to being on the boat during those few days that I was actually more seasick on land when the floor wasn't rocking gently beneath me. I really would like to be back out on that boat. I've already decided that we're definitely going to do another liveaboard, either in Bali or in Thailand somewhere. I can't wait!

Now we're off to Bali and Indonesia by way of Brisbane (5 hours), Darwin (26 hours), and Singapore (8 hours). We're planning to be in Singapore by Chinese New Year, so let me know if you'll be there then and we'll catch up!

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