OZ- Week 42 Airlie Beach and Whitsunday Islands

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This week has been absolutely great, despite the weather trying hard to ruin it. I am battered, bruised, have a slashed foot and salt-ruined hair but I have had a ball sailing in the Whitsunday Islands. I have seen turtles, dolphins and dugons close up and I even got the chance to meet Elvis. Its been seriously great.

The week started with the very comfortable 10 hour trip between Cairns and Proserpine on the Tilt Train and then a bus to Airlie Beach. The business class style seats on the train reclined and had their own mini entertainment screens that played films, TV series and a wide range of radio stations, plus a live feed from a camera on the front of the train that gave the Drivers view. We passed hour after hour of sugar cane fields, almost ready to crop with their eerie grey feathery tops waving over the tall stalks. We also passed many banana plantations and of course lots of bush. The windows were large and we watched an attractive and interesting series of views as we slowly moved through the countryside, occasionally speeding up but always the motion was merely a slight rock and no rail noise. Pretty smooth really.

The 30-minute bus transfer was easy and I checked into my hotel in Airlie Beach around 7.30pm on Wednesday night. I had found another great internet deal, so was having a couple of luxury nights in one of the few places that had a flat walk into town, as most other places are up steep hills that give great views over the bay across to the start of the islands, but are killers for your legs and lungs. The town is small with just one main street, mainly set up to service the countless opportunities to take trips around the Whitsunday Islands with dozens of tour offices, but it does have a good choice of restaurants, a sweet lagoon pool set in a pretty park and a boardwalk that runs around a coastal walk that is nicely landscaped.

I had bought my 3-night trip sailing on a Tall Ship already in the Travel Auction months ago, so went to the company’s office to check out available dates and was offered either the Saturday departure with a half full boat and slightly dodgy weather with high winds for the first 24 hours, or wait until Tuesday with a full boat and calmer seas. Hard decision, but one extra factor helped me choose when the lady said that I had a good chance of moving to my own cabin on Saturday’s boat, rather than the 4-share room that I had paid for. So I signed up for the windy trip and went to the pharmacy for a range of seasickness tablets. I also managed to split my hotel booking so that I could leave my luggage and have 2 nights there after my 3 night sailing trip.

I spent a relaxing couple of days mooching around Airlie Beach, trying several of the cafes and finding a good book exchange where I stocked up on novels and a guide book about Oahu to research my trip to Hawaii. Happily my friend Joy has just confirmed that she will be joining me for part of both my Hawaii and California stops, which is great news. My hotel had gven me a voucher for a great Tex-Mex restaurant giving 50% off any meal ordered before 6pm, so I used it to get a juicy steak on the cheap. I went to the Saturday market that was held right by the beach with a range of goods on offer from clothing and jewellry to fresh produce and food stalls. There was a fun camel ride along the beach for the kids, with the guys leading the camels dressed up in arab-style clothing. I sorted out my gear for the boat trip and struggled to get it all into the tiny eco bag that is meant to be the only luggage you bring onboard the ship. So I also took my dry-sack (that I have been lugging around since Thailand) that turned out to be really handy, keeping its contents bone dry on numerous splashy tender rides, landings where you waded in waist high water, a wet bushwalk and a sandblasting on the beach.

The bus transfer to the port collected us in town at 6.30pm after dark, so our first view of the magnificent Solway Lass was under the marina lights. She was built in 1902 of German blue steel with a timber deck and superstructure, is 127 feet long and the largest Tallship in the Whitsundays. The 6-man crew introduced themselves and we were allocated our cabins. Result, I managed to get one to myself, even though there was not enough room at the side of the bunk to stand sideways, which meant that for the whole trip I dressed my bottom-half like a contortionist. We congregated in the salon to meet each other and get our first briefing as we got underway. There were only 14 passengers, which is less than half full, with what turned out to be a great crowd with a wide range of ages and from 6 different countries. We had been warned that this first run would be the roughest as we had to cross the Whitsunday Passage against the tide and with very strong winds, so I took my seasick medicine and hoped for the best. It was indeed very lumpy and we had plenty of rock and roll and some very green faces, with some people braving the cold and sitting outside to try to stave off the nausea, but I was fine. I think this rough trip was made worse by being in the dark so you couldn’t see any horizon line. When we arrived at our first anchorage around 10.30pm in the fiord-like Nara Inlet on Hook Island, Jade our excellent cook served up delicious pumpkin soup and crusty bread and we all got an early night where we slept like babies - literally as we were gently rocked in our cribs (well, bunks).

It was a delight to wake up in the beautiful bay overlooking the steep hills of Hook Island that were completely covered in trees, for our 7am breakfast of cereals and toast and gallons of coffee. As it was overcast and still windy, LLoyd the Captain decided that we would spend the whole afternoon sailing, but first we would motor to Tongue Bay on the back of Whitsunday Island, the largest island in the chain. When we arrived and had anchored we climbed into the small inflatable tender boat and were ferried in two groups to the rocky beach. Tongue Bay is filled with sea grasses and is the home to lots of turtles - we saw several but they can only be glimpsed for a few seconds as they raise their heads and come up for air, so I didn’t manage to capture them on film.

We trekked through bush up and over the steep hill then up again to a Lookout and had possibly the biggest WOW moment on this continent as we saw the whole of Hill Inlet laid out beneath us, with the added advantage of being there at low tide. The swirling white sands mixed with strips of water in every hue of blue, green and turquoise you have ever seen, all framed by thickly forested hills and the crashing white-capped waves of the ocean. Words and photographs cant do justice to the amazing beauty of this place and the view from the Lookout. We spent quite a while there, first madly snapping pictures but then we all stood quietly just absorbing the majesty of the scene. Its amazing and if you ever get the chance to visit, you must make the effort to get to the Lookout. It was a real shame that it was cloudy while we were there as I am sure the colours would be even more vibrant in full sun.

Hill Inlet sits in the centre of our next treat, Whitehaven Beach. Its a 4 kilometre stretch of the purest silica sand anywhere in the World, splitting into two beaches of bright, white, powdery sand that is as soft as talcum powder. The 98 percent purity means that it makes perfect glass and was used to make the lens of the Hubble Telescope. It also does an amazing job at cleaning your jewellry but it does get everywhere and you have to be careful as it can easily get into the workings of your watch or camera. Another amazing fact is that it always remains cold, even under the hottest blazing sun, as it reflects all the heat. We were on the wider North beach and set up a mini camp while we explored and played. The wind was still quite strong so we got a bit of a sandblasting and the waves were pretty choppy, but we had a great time making human pyramids, trying to play ball, braving the water in our wetsuits for a bracing dip and finally crashing out on the sand to make the most of the odd glimpse of sun and to take in the atmosphere of this breathtaking natural miracle. The blowing sand covered your towel completely within 5 minutes and got into every orifice. We stayed until lunchtime and returned to Solway Lass for the first of many fabulous meals, this one being numerous types of salad, breads and BBQ’d sausages. I don’t know whether it was the sea air or just the consistently great food, but we all ate like pigs for the whole trip.

After lunch we got the chance to haul on ropes and shout out “Aye aye Boson” as he shouted orders and we ‘helped’ raise the complex sets of sails. We got more cheeky as we got used to helping with the sails and more than once the response changed to “Aye aye Possum”. Thank goodness the crew were well practised and competent. Our boat crew apparently had a reputation for stealing other boats pirate flags, as they considered Solway Lass to be the only one that should fly them. So just before we left Tongue Bay, Damon our Boson had sneaked across to another, rival boat and pinched their flag and he raised it as we sailed out past them and strutted beside it shouting out derogatory remarks. They were not happy.

Although it was still choppy in places I had taken another precautionary seasickness tablet and had started to get my sea-legs, so the afternoon sail was great. We passed by several small islands and saw hundreds of other sailing vessels of all types and sizes. There were several snacks laid out during the course of the day with fresh juicy fruit, cake, biscuits and hot nachos covered in cheese and spicy salsa. The fruits were the sweetest and most juicy I had ever had - perhaps it was because you could dribble down your chin with impunity and just jump in the sea to wash away any sticky bits, or perhaps it was that freshly harvested, sun-ripened and carefully selected tropical fruits eaten outdoors in the sunshine are just glorious.

Sadly although they are transiting through the area and other boats reported sightings, we didn’t spot any whales, despite keeping a good look out for them. One time Mikey yelled in a loud voice “Whales ........” upon which one of the Irish girls leapt up, ran downstairs to the cabins to wake her room-mates from their siesta shouting for them to come up, quickly! What they hadn’t heard was Mikey complete his sentence in a much lower voice so what he actually said was “WHALES (pause) are often seen around here at this time of year”. We almost wet ourselves laughing as the tangle of girls, bleary eyed and rumpled from their snooze, rushed out on deck crying “where, where are the whales ?”. Thankfully they did see the funny side of the trick, however they never believed another word from Mikey for the rest of the trip.

We anchored in Stonehaven Bay where the evening meal of satay chicken and rice was good and we spent a few hours chatting over beers and wine, all wrapped up in our warmest clothes as it was chilly and the sky was cloudy. The lights of our boat attracted shoals of pretty fish and two pale-coloured dolphins who played around us for 30 minutes, looking ghostly white. Talking of ghosts, we were told the story of Captain Anderson who had been overcome by fumes in the engine room, collapsed and died. In those days only the captain (and occasionally the first officer) knew how to navigate and so the scared crew abandoned the ship in the lifeboats, to be rescued a week later. Meanwhile the spirit of Captain Anderson was dead grumpy, firstly to have died and secondly to have his crew desert the ship, so apparently he stayed around to haunt the Solway Lass. We were told stories of strange noises, unexplained door openings and of people being pinched by ghostly fingers as they stood near the engine room hatch. Nobody on my tour heard, saw, felt or believed any such nonsense.

Now for the bad stuff. At times you felt as if you were riding a rollercoaster and a rocking boat is quite dangerous as you tend to bang into things as you get thrown around, so I collected an impressive display of bruises. When the ship is running only on the power of the smaller generator there is no electric light in the cabins and as they are below the waterline and don’t have portholes or windows it dark, causing more bumps and bruises and the occasional stubbed toe. Judging by the expletives I heard, I was not the only klutz knocking themselves around. The only other negative thing I could say about the trip was the lack of anywhere soft to sit, as the narrow benches in the salon were rock hard and the outside seating was all unpadded wood deck or salon roof or heavy wooden stools that resembled old-fashioned saw-horses. You couldn’t stay in the same place for long as your buttock cheeks went completely numb. Nope, cant think of anything else that was bad.

During the evening many of us got ‘tagged’. The tags are made from plaited marine cord in a variety of colours and are made by the crew to earn extra rum-money. They are made to exactly fit either your ankle or wrist and the final ends of cord are melted together, meaning you cant remove it unless you cut it off and ruin it. Its pretty scary when they set light to the cord, although they put scissors underneath the hot spot to avoid your skin burning - nevertheless the guys seemed to lose some of their leg-hair. I got a purple and blue 2-strand on my wrist done by Damon - you can get an impressive 3-strander but they are wider and better suited to the male arm/leg - and I also got a second one the following evening done by Mikey on my ankle in black and purple. The history was that sailors used to make them for their wife or girlfriend with a snug fit, knowing that if she got pregnant and swelled up she would have to cut it off and have to explain any mismatch in the age of a child and the timing of her pregnancy when the sailor returned from a couple of years away at sea. They were fun and a nice reminder of the trip. Despite the ghost stories another sound nights sleep followed, being rocked gently and listening to the lap of waves against the hull and the occasional splash of a jumping fish. Lovely.

The weather improved overnight and the wind had dropped, which was perfect as our morning activity was snorkelling off Hayman Island in the famous Blue Pearl Bay, named as one of the World Top Ten Reefs. It took less than an hour to get there after breakfast so there were not too many other boats or groups of snorkellers when we arrived, although by the time we left the place was starting to get very busy. We struggled into the wetsuits (there really is no elegant way of donning those things) and jumped into the tender boat to be dropped on the coral beach, which was painful to walk on. The reef here was amazing with brightly coloured fish everywhere and numerous coloured corals and giant clams. We were here at low tide, so occasionally the coral near the shore was just millimetres under your boobs - OK maybe I had more of a problem with that than most others - so we were glad of the wetsuit’s bouyancy and also the noodle floats we had brought with us to lodge under our hips. I managed to gash my foot on the pad under my big toe on a piece of sharp coral on the beach, which stung and bled a lot.

We had a wonderful time snorkelling for over an hour and being fascinated and enchanted every second of that time with the huge range of reef-life. Mikey (deckhand) drove the tender near us in the deeper water, throwing out handfuls of pellets to feed and attract more fish, so it felt like you were swimming through a live fish soup with thousands of fish around you. He also pointed out the area where Elvis lives and we all managed to catch a glimpse of this huge black and purple Maori Wrasse. An interesting thing about this species of fish is that there can only be one male in each territory, so when the male dies the largest female changes sex and becomes the new male and can grow to over 6 feet long. Therefore our Elvis was previously known as Priscilla.

We returned to Solway Lass and had lunch as we watched Blue Pearl Bay get more and more crowded with day-trip boats. We upped anchor and motored to our second snorkel site at Langford Spit, an amazing stretch of golden sand attached to Langford Island, that is only accessible at low tide. Jade (cook) and Kate (bar) took us on this trip and we had great fun snorkelling and then sunbaking on the steep sides of the sandbar as the sun was out and it was gloriously warm, watching the seaplane and helicopters fly overhead as they showed off ‘our’ sand-spit to their passengers. We enjoyed the story of how this lovely sandbar was formed. The nearby posh 6-star Hayman Island Resort had spent a fortune on shipping in soft white sand (much of it taken from Whitehaven Beach) to improve their resort beach. Mother Nature had other ideas though, and the action of wind and tide had slowly scooped off most of their expensive sand and deposited it a couple of miles away, forming the serpent-shaped Langford Spit. We relaxed here for over an hour as our sand island gradually shrank with the rising tide, enjoying great snorkelling, spotting turtles and playing or lounging on the sand. There was a brief flurry of action as the tender boat drifted away by itself and Kate had to throw herself in the water to chase after it - then Kate and Jade had to take turns sitting on its bow to anchor it to the steep beach.

In the late afternoon we made our way to the anchorage for our last night in Cid Bay, named for Captain Cook’s dog who died and was buried on the nearby Cid Island. there was plenty of time for swinging from the rope and jumping into the water, with the younger guys getting increasingly more daring. We lounged around deck or sunbathed in the last of the heat on the roof of the salon or in the bow nets. I spent some time chatting to Sophie who was working as the Volley (maid) in return for the trip, which sounded like a great deal. Sadly you need to be on a working visa to do things like that and under an outrageously ageist rule, you cant get a working visa over the age of 30. Bum. The afternoon snack was a huge meat and cheese platter and dinner was a yummy roast beef and roast vegetables - we even had a pudding of lemon cake and vanilla icecream. It was amazing what Jade rustled up in that tiny galley. The hot water showers onboard were effective, although a bit cramped and we were limited to 2 minutes each, which was enough to wash the salt from your hair and deposit significant amounts of rinsed-off sand on the shower floor. After a lovely sunset we saw plenty more fish attracted into our lights and also the most amazing starscape, with a couple of extra bright planets on display. The atmosphere was calm and the water glistened with the lights from dozens of other boats and yachts moored in the Bay. As the evening wore on, the clear skies were covered in more and more stars and the longer you stared up the more layers of the Milky Way were revealed. I lay on my back on the salon roof for ages just soaking up this very special place.

Our final day started with a wet and windy short walk in the rainforest over a hill between two pretty beaches. We had planned to trek up to the top of the highest point on Whitsunday Island for what is reputed to be an amazing view of the whole chain of islands, but the peak was shrouded in cloud and rain so we had to go to Plan B. I was actually quite glad as the 3-4 hour walk would have included over 3 kilometres climbing almost straight up to reach the top, which would have been strenuous. We had to don the rather unattractive yellow slickers to keep off the rain for our walk that took about 30 minutes, which we dumped as soon as we arrived at the beach and got wet anyway playing in the water. Back on Solway Lass we saw a rather special sight of two dugons in the water less than 100 feet away from us, flipping their tails. These shy creatures are not often seen and Damon (Boson) said he had only seen them a couple of times in the last 2 years, so we were extremely lucky. Dugons are strange creatures that look a bit like a cross between a seal and a dolphin with a cat-shaped face, are vegetarian only eating plants and are what ancient sailors used to think were mermaids, perhaps because female dugons grow breasts when feeding their young.

Our last afternoon was cloudy and chilly, but there was good wind so we all helped to hoist the sails and we spent 4 hours under full canvas making our way back to Airlie Beach. We docked at 4.30pm and were all very sorry that this great trip had come to an end. Although we only had the middle day of good weather we had all enjoyed the variety of activities, the amazing sights, the abundance of marine life, great crew and food and each others company. I loved every minute and would love to do another sailing trip

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