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Published: March 22nd 2012
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We left Sydney along with Luke and Dana in the morning and took a few hours flight to Hamilton Island in the Whitsundays.
The Whitsunday Islands are a collection of continental islands of various sizes off the central coast of Queensland, Australia, situated between just south of Bowen and to the north of Mackay, some 900 kms (560 mi) north of Brisbane. The island group is centred on Whitsunday Island, while the group's commercial centre is Hamilton Island.
The beautiful sunny weather of Sydney has quickly changed to very cloudy and rainy weather up in Queensland. We knew that the area of Whitsundays is currently in its rainy season but we clearly underestimated, as you will read later on.
We landed on the smallest possible runway that a jet-liner can land on; it was fascinating to watch the reverse thrust in the engines and smoke coming out from both landing gear and the engine. The plane literally stopped about 50-100 feet from the end of the runway. Another interesting thing about the Hamilton Island airport was that it has no conveyor belts for luggage; the airport crew just brings the bags in electric carts.
Sunsail, our charter
company was there to welcome us but it turned out that their van was broken, so we had to transfer to the marina in the golf cart, in the middle of pouring rain – an appropriate welcome for the wet season!
Our 38 foot Sunsail catamaran was amazing, with a spacious kitchen and four cabins (two for sleeping and two we used to store our luggage). The boat itself can sleep up to 10, so with just the four of us we had plenty of space to spread out. After a short briefing we were off and had the Sunsail captain Barney (challenge accepted!!) come with us for a few hours to familiarize us with the equipment on board. It was certainly the most high-tech boat I have ever sailed, and two engines (instead of one that is typical on monohulls) proved to be quite helpful.
Our first day was actually not very rainy and we quickly made our way to Cid Harbor on the west side of Whitsunday Island. The anchorage proved to be very quiet; Luke and I explored the local beaches on the dinghy while the ladies started cooking dinner. We had a nice grill
on the boat as well and we went for the “Platinum” provisioning, so even though we lived on the boat, we ate quite gourmet meals!
Our second day of sailing was more adventures and involved lots of rain, sailing through a storm that rendered us basically unable to see for more than 200 feet. We ended up going into a very beautiful anchorage called Nara Inlet, which was surrounded from both sides by 250 foot cliffs covered in beautiful green trees.
Our third day in the Whitsundays proved to be the most fun, morning sun woke us up and we started sailing north towards Hook Island for some snorkeling. The weather was very nice with sun out and while we sailed the boat with music on in the back, the girls suntanned in the front of the catamaran. After snorkeling over lunch and seeing truly amazing coral reef with lots of colorful fish, we started sailing away from the mooring into the open ocean. Luke and I quickly spotted a large swath of rain and storm coming and we did our best to avoid it – but to no avail. We spent the next hour or so sailing
with the maximum boat speed (8.2 knots) and in winds of 25+ knots, completely soaked and with our sunglasses covered in water from the pouring rain. It was a really great and fun experience, especially that we were able to perform some nice maneuvers in those conditions as well (including a jibe back towards our overnight anchorage – Stonehaven). We were both very excited about that experience!
Our next day was definitely the most grueling - not only we were not able to sleep well during the night – multiple storms kept on swinging us around quite a bit on our mooring as well, the mooring ball kept on hitting our boat and making lots of noise. I got up at least a few times and went to check the mooring in the middle of the rain at 1, 3 and 5am. The weather the next day was rainy for most of the day with very strong winds and almost two meter waves. It was unfortunate as this was our longest sailing day around Whitsunday Island and over to the area of the famous Whitehaven beach. Luke took Dana and Suzi out on the dinghy to walk along longfoot
beach. It was an amazing small patch of sand in the middle of the water. Although rainy, it was great to walk on the sand and watch the water splash over the point on either side. They felt as though they were walking on water. We motored most of the day, with girls feeling a bit queasy but we were ultimately rewarded with 1h of extremely fun sailing when we got the wind we needed to go in our desired direction. We even broke our top speed for the trip – 8.4 knots! We spent the night at Chalkie’s Beach anchorage and were being swung during the night again quite a bit, which prompted us to set up an anchor alarm and Luke slept outside starting around 330am.
On our final day in the Whitsundays, we visited the Whitehaven beach (in the rain…) and motored back into the marina – we were in desperate need of laundry, dryers and land! Most of our clothes were soaked and it was impossible to dry them in a humid and rainy weather.
We had a nice last night dinner and parted ways next morning. Luke and Dana were off to Brisbane
in the afternoon and Suzi and I off to Melbourne to visit her Godbrother Jamie and his wife Theresa, who is now 8-months pregnant with their first child.
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