9th July 2012 (Coral Bay)

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Woke up nice and early in preparation for our day out on the boat in search of a whale shark. Feeling abit nervous as I don't like to be out of my depth in the big wide deep ocean and not knowing what is under you!! Charles is pumped and ready to go. We drop the little ones off at mum and dads (thank goodness they're here as well to look after the girls) with plenty of things to do, I think they will have lots of fun today.

Down we walk to the dive shop to go and try on our wetsuits and flippers, on the bus we hop and it all begins.

There's about 20 people on the trip today and all really excited about what they are about to come face to face with. We couldn't of asked for a better day, the weather, wind and water is just perfect. We first of all go out to a lovely reef drop and jump off the backboard of the boat and snorkel the area. We see plenty of reef, fish and swam with a turtle. The water visibility is fantastic and the camera worked really well.

We had morning tea aboard the boat and set off in search of the whale shark. The boat suddenly slows and we come across some humpback whales migrating up the coast, amazing to watch them folicking in the water and the size of them is unbelievable. It's hard to capture them with the camera as you have to be so fast on the button, we manage to get some good footage though. After 20 minutes of watching these whales we're off again. It takes two and a half hours to travel up the coast with the spotter plane flying about above searching for that one shark that we're all so excited to see.

All of a sudden the boat goes into full throatal as group one (our group) is told to get ready. It's a mad rush as we pull on our wetsuits, flippers and mask, then get onto the backboard of the board whilst it's still racing to get in front of the shark.

Skipper shouts "Hailey in" (videographer), "Swimmer in" (crew member), "Group In" no time to think, in we all jump and faces down to get our look at this magnificent magestic creature. After all the choas of jumping in and flippers and bubbles in my face the water clears and OMG there it was, a 8 metre whaleshark. It's beautiful and just glides through the water without effort while we are all trying to keep up with it. Shortly after the whale decides to dive and we all huddle into a group so the boat could come back and collect us. Only then I think about being in deep water.... I make my way into the middle of group until we're picked up LOL!

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We clamber on board and group 2 gets ready to maneovre into the water, however, the shark has gone too deep and we need to wait until it resurfaces. They call time for lunch and everyone is back on board getting ready for the lunch, next minute the skipper calls again for group 2 to get ready, it's a mad rush again as they get ready. Group 1 is also told to get ready for the second drop. Lunch is put on hold.

All in all each group had four drops each with the same shark. Lunch was fantastic with a buffet of cold meats and salad. We were absolutely shattered by the last drop and were really hyped at what we had seen the skipper turns the boat around and headed back to Coral Bay. I'm sure I was going to be swaying in bed tonight the swell had picked up whilst we were out. The skipper decided that we had enough time to enjoy another snorkel out at another reef before we called it a day so in we went again. One of the girls on our trip saw a reef shark and it scared the poop out of her as she surfaced and couldn't find anyone around her. Charles and I went in search of this reef shark, but we couldn't find it. Reef sharks generally don't attack humans unless humans annoy or come too close to them.

It was such an amazing day and I thanked the man up stairs for looking after Charles and I out in the deep ocean. I can now cross that off my list of things to do.

Mum and dad had cooked dinner for us which was lovely and meant that we could just sit back and reflect. My head hit the pillow and I was out like a light...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

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