Sailing around the Whitsundays

---

We have recently returned from a 3 day sailing trip round the whitsunday. We did the usual - 3 day / 2 night sailing on a lovely boat called Waltzing Matilda. There were 9 of us on the boat, us, 4 people from Ireland and 3 Canadian girls. We were upgraded to the private double, which was nice as it meant that we had a nice big double bed and a room to ourselves. The funny thing was that I was going to pay an extra $50 each for this when we booked the trip but Ian convinced me not to as we should be saving money. So it was nice to get the room at no extra costs! Our crew was a French skipper who has been working in Airlie and Cairns for the past 20 years or something and an 18 year old boy, who it turned out his parents owned the boat. Very nice!

The first day was spent sailing out to the Whitsunday islands. It was actually a mixture of sailing and using the engine as there wasn't much wind. We did a bit of snorkeling somewhere, which was nice but it wasn't that amazing as the visibility wasn't that great. We all looked very fetching in our stinger suits which had to be worn as although stinger season is over (ends in April) they still hang around so better to be safe. They also provided some warmth in the water which was def needed!

The next day we went to Whitehaven beach, which is beautifal. On the way to the beach we went passed a massive turtle swimming around. After a few hours hanging around the beach we went off to another snorkeling place. This one was much better then the one the day before as we saw loads of fish, including a massive fish that was probably the same size as me (harmless though)! There was also loads of nice coral to look at and loads of smaller fish that were so used to people feeding them that they came really close. I tried to touch them but of course they were a bit too quick for me!

This was the end of the sunshine though as that night the heavens opened up and it rained. Our bed got a bit wet as the boat was leaking a little, but it wasn't too bad! The next day we still went snorkelling but probably only lasted about 20 minutes in the water as it was really cold. We saw pretty much the same thing as we had seen the previous day, apart from the massive fish.

Then it was time to sail back to Airlie Beach. There was loads of wind so we sailed nearly the whole way and I must say it was horrible, although Ian loved it! The boat was really choppy and we kept getting soaking wet as we went through the massive waves. All in all, made me feel pretty sick! But we arrived safely back in Airlie so that was good! And it was straight on an overnight bus to Cairns. This was our second overnight bus in Oz. Our first one was pretty horrendous. We had the most annoying American bus driver ever! He kept waking everyone up every 3 hours or so to tell us that we were in the middle of no-where in case we cared. This time though, our bus broke down at about 2 o'clock in the morning and we had to wait for about 2 hours to get a new one. Not very good as you can imagine but nothing we could do as the bus had literally stopped and wouldn't start again. The driver had parked a bit off the highway, on the top of some railway tracks. I hadn't noticed but some people were worrying about it, which was fair enough. The driver said that the line wasn't used anymore but one guy (of course English!) asked- Was he sure and maybe we should all push the bus off the tracks just to be safe! Now I'm not sure if he was secretly Superman or something but there is no way that even with everyone on the bus pushing we would be able to move it! Oh backpackers!!!!

---