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Published: August 6th 2007
Aaarrrrr, greetings landlubbers, Captain Patchybeard here. Just spent a few days sailing the seven seas of the Whitsunday Islands aboard the good ship Alexander Stewart.
After the difficulty of finding a boat to get on we headed down to the Marina on Friday morning expecting to find the boat with a few holes in or in an unseaworthy state. However, we were pleasantly surprised to be boarding a very nice timber tall ship along with a motley assortment of salty seadogs, landlubbers and pirates.
The boat is the kind of one that Dad's love. Fully kitted out in timber with a beautiful finish, 4 sails, a crowsnest and a nice deck to laze on. There were 18 passengers in total along with the three crew so the boat was fairly spacious with room for all of us. The boat was built by a very odd family of carpenters. They spent 18 years hand crafting it in their back yard as they believed the world was going to end in 2000. They built it so that it would be sufficient for them to sail to Antarctica where they felt they would be safe and we were told that you could
survive for about 2 years on this boat (if you had enough food). Oddballs obviously.
The Whitsundays are a group of 74 lush tropical islands off the coast of Northern Queensland. They are pretty stunning to sail around and if anyone is out this way they should definitely make the effort to get themselves on a boat. On our first day we headed out of the main marina at Airlie and set our sails up to take us out to the islands. We stopped for lunch at Hook Passage as it was a bit calmer there and so our food didn't all head overboard. We spent the early afternoon heading in and around the islands, relaxing on board and helping the crew out with putting the sails up and down. I felt like a real pirate.
Early on the first day of sailing I suffered my first pirate injury. As I was exiting the toilet I forgot to lift my foot over the wood pannelling so bashed my toe. As you can imagine, Mrs Deane was very sympathetic and kept poking it and asking whether it hurt.
Once through the passage we headed off to Whitehaven beach
for the afternoon. It is one of the most stunning beaches in the world. It's 7km long and 98.5% silica. When NASA were building the Hubble telescope they even took a bag of the sand to make their lens with. A bit blinding white.
We settled ourselves down on the beach for the arvo and launched ourselves into a few games of frisbee action as well as frolicking in the sea (with our obligatory and very fashionable stinger suits).
After a few hours chilling we got ourselves back on board for an evening of fine food, a little snifter of wine and getting to know the rest of our pirate friends. There was Tom, Helen, Tim, Gwen, Ally, Anne, Helena, Jenny, Alex, Laurie, Rob, Belen plus a Swiss and German couple that we never did get the names of. The weather was warm (well, I thought so anyway) so we were up on deck gazing at the clear skies until nearly midnight. Helen was a fellow Mancunian so we discussed the merits of North and South and you will be glad to know that Tom (a southerner) came round to our way of thinking and heartily agreed that
the north is far superior to the south.
In the middle of the night I suffered my second pirate injury. I stood up to go to the loo, the boat lurched and in the fairly tight cabin smacked my nose into the mirror. Again, Mrs Deane showed a lot of sympathy and took great pleasure in pointing out my growing bruise on the bridge of my nose. She also continued to poke my toe and ask whether it hurt.
It was an early start as we had to make the most of the tides - you can tell I'm getting into this boat thingy. We had breakfast at 7am and then headed round the northern headland and into Hill Inlet. If you see any postcards of Whitehaven Beach then this is where they are taken from. Once you've landed on the pebbly beach in the inlet it's a quick 20 minute bushwalk to the summit from where you have a view over Whitehaven beach and the swirling sands of the inlet next to it. The colours are amazing - blues, greens, turquoises, whites, all sorts as the sand is churned about. I don't think our photos will do
it justice but it's the kind of view you can look at for hours...
However, if you do that then you'll get stuck when the tide goes out so not very sensible. We dived back onto the boat and then set sail for north. Or something like that. We were heading over to Hayman Island next for a bit of a snorkel on the reef. It took about 3 hours to head up that way and it was a nice relaxing ride in and out of the various islands and passages.
We finally pulled into Blue Pearl Bay for our snorkel. It was over a really nice section of reef and we dived straight in (once again in our fashionable stinger suits). The water was crystal clear and there were loads of fish all over the place. The highlights were a second stingray in a week (check out the photo) and a 1.5m Maori Wrasse (big dopey looking bugger) - again, check out the photo.
A little bit tired we headed round to our mooring for the night and settled down for another peaceful and relaxed night.
Our final day at sea began with another snorkel
off a different reef which was not quite as good as the first but still fun. As we were waiting for all the other pirates to board after the snorkel a few of us boys decided to test out some diving techniques from the boat. I managed a bomb, straight jump in and even a backwards dive.
And then pirate injury number three. A real scourge of pirates everywhere. In attempting a somersault I landed flat on my back on the water. That's going to sting in the morning. Mrs Deane was very sympathetic and tried not to giggle too much. She also continued to poke my toe and ask whether it hurt and laugh at the bruise on my nose.
After another fine lunch it was time for the sail home. We all helped hoist up the sails again and we were off. We all then headed to the tiller to have a go at directing the boat. All good fun and the patchy beard I had grown especially for the trip seemed to help with my directional skills. After docking we said our goodbyes to all the other pirates and got on our way.
Would
just like to point out that whilst on board we met Welsh Emma's doppelganger - Amy. An Irish lass who was working as the skivvy on the boat cooking us meals and looking after us (very well I should add). She looks exactly like Emma, laughs like her, smokes like her, speaks like her and is identical to her in every way. Cathy made sure she got a photo of her so Sara and Kari and Les can verify the likeness.
After hanging around in Airlie for a few days waiting for our boat we were a little behind schedule so we decided to drive quite a bit that evening. We got ourselves up to Townsville about 300km to the north and almost half of the way to Cairns. Dropped in at a hostel as all the campsites were closed and managed to bag a single room (which happened to have a double bed and loads of room). And sleep.
We were up early with a vague plan. We were going to try and book some diving out of Townsville. If we couldn't do that we would hightail it out to Cairns and try there instead. And we
got lucky. There was a 3 day live-aboard dive boat leaving on the Tuesday evening and it had our names on it. After that was booked we realised we had a day and a half to kill so we
made the decision to have one complete rest day and then explore a bit of the Paluma National Park the following day.
First stop therefore was a campsite. Rolled into one that had a pool, put up the tent and then retired to the poolside with our books. We even managed a little doze in the sunshine. Relaxing indeed. We realised we needed to pep ourselves up a little so we decided to hire some tennis stuff and have a quick half hour game....
And you join us on centre court for the match up that everyone has been waiting for - Deane vs Deane. The game began with Deane on the attack from the off and Deane soon had a lead of 3 games to nil with an early break of serve. Then it was comeback time with Deane taking the next two to pull it back a little but then Deane lost serve so it was back
to 4-2 before Deane broke back to bring it to 4-3. Nervewracking stuff indeed. Deane pulled clear again to take it to 5-3 and needing one game to take the match... And this is when Deane showed a bit of mettle breaking back and then holding serve with a rasping backhand drop-volley slam forehand across Deane just landing in the lines to bring it to 5-5. It was then that Deane and Deane called it a tie as our time was up.
Hope you enjoyed the sporting interlude.
We had a nice quiet evening cooking in the camp kitchen and then it was sleep again. In the morning we set off on a quick 45 minute drive up to the Paluma National Park. We stopped at both Little and Big Crystal Creeks with the little one being nicer as it had a big drop waterfall and a very pleasant stone bridge over it. We then headed on to Paluma village for our picnic lunch and then a walk through the rainforest up there. All very beautiful up in the hills.
It was then a quick hour's run back to Townsville to sort out some supplies for our
boat trip and confirm we were still on our boat. It's all sorted now so we are waiting for a respectable time to head to The Brewery pub for tea and a pint - I've heard there may be new beers for me to try.
Thats it from us for now. We shall get back to you with a final Oz blog in a week or so after our dive trip. This time next week we'll be in New Zealand where it will be colder than England. Brrrr. Time to get back on the boat.
Pirate Patchybeard & First Mate Mrs Deane
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Sara
non-member comment
Emma lookalikey
Mhm, gota say, not so sure on the Emma lookalike from the pic, can sort of see the resemblance but was expecting a full-on twin of our Em! nice to know she gets about a bit though (as if we didnt know that already..) All sounds great, photos of those beaches are fab, xx