Sailing in the Whitsundays

---

The prospect of spending three full days living on a boat was something i found pretty interesting and the fact that it was a small boat with only 12 other passengers, one of whom i already knew made this an attractive prospect.

The scenary while sailing the whitsundays is really beautiful and as someone who loves great scenary it was something i took to straight away. One of the things i also love about being on boats are when you swim in the sea after diving off a boat, i find this far more interesting than just going into the sea from the beach, so when it was time to go for a swim i was well into this.

One problem though is that in the area at this time of year there is a danger from Marine Stingers (a type of jellyfish) so it is not safe to swim without using a "stinger suit" an all in one body suit that protects from the stingers. I understand the need to be safe but these suits are annoying to put on and take away some of the enjoyment of swimming in the sea, but still i would rather swim in such a suit than not at all and certainly would rather than than getting stung.

Later on the boat moved to another area of water where we were given snorkelling equipment and told that there was good snorkelling here. I joined the rest of the passengers in going snorkelling and saw fish and coral and all that. It was quite impressive, but i have to say it was nothing like the underwater scenary that i had seen in the cook islands a couple of months before. Anyway, something went a bit wrong during this time when i (stupidly) caught my foot on the coral causing cuts to my foot. My foot was bleeding and i had to get out of the water because it started to hurt.

It looked quite bad and the skipper of the boat put some antiseptic on it, he said that if it doesn't become seriously inflamed in anhour or two then it is not serious. Fortunately it got no worse so it must not have been bad (though even as i write this - a few days later- my foot still looks quite badly cut).

The boat dropped anchor for our first night on the boat and we had food and everybody stayed on deck to chat, i got talking to two swedish guys who seemed cool, one of them like me was a huge fan of tennis (as i am) so we had that to talk about, not to mention the upcoming world cup in which Sweden play England. Additionally many of the people sat around telling jokes, some of which were the most disgusting set of jokes i think i have ever heard, particularly from this 30 year old German girl, her jokes were so gross that i cannot bring myself to repeat them here (funny though).

Whwen i awoke the boat was already heading towards its next destination, the seas were choppy and it was moving up and down already, i wanted to stay lied down for a bit longer but with the boat bouncing up and down i started to feel sick and decided i had to get up. It was worse for a guy in the bunk opposite me who was thrown out of bed by the way the boat was bouncing he flung out across the floor and into the bunk at the other side. He later told me he was o.k. though. As i got up i felt like i was going to throw up but i didn't and after 20 minutes or so sitting up on deck i was fine.

The boat then took us to another island (can't recall the name of it) to visit Whitehaven beach. The beach was a bit of a walk from wher the boat was anchored. And while i was walking, along with Eric, through the trees and vegetation to the beach i happened to run into a guy called Richard who i had met a couple of months earlier on the island of Rarotonga in the cook islands. This was quite a coincidence as it seemed as though i only meet this guy on remote islands (even though he is English). I remember thinking at the time that Richard is one of the most "together" people i have ever met, and it was nice to see him again as i liked him at the time.

When Eric and I reached whitehavren beach it was a real stunner a really beautiful beach with the required pure white sand and translucent turquoise water. The views were not harmed by the fact that the beach featured at least one woman sunbathing topless. We spent the morning there and it was really nice.

Snorkelling was on the agenda again that afternoon, but i decided to opt out of it, basically because my foot was still badly cut from the night before so i stayed sat on the boat while everyone else went snorkelling. I didn't mind though, putting on the stinger suit would have been cumbersome enough anyway.

Day three was different and saw the boat manouvre its way to South Molle island where there is a resort, the resort has a bar, a swimming pool, a golf course and some really good walks. The swedish guys wanted to play golf and most of the rest wanted to do a walk. The prospect of walking was not for me though because of my foot and i just hung around the pool area and swam quite a lot, along with a French girl called Cecile, the only member of the party other than me who chose to stay by the pool area. She was cool though and we chatted in between swimming, sunbathing and more swimming.

That was the last significant event of the three days and after that it was lunch followed by a journey back to the mainland, this was charcterised by more stunning scenary but i was a bit sad as this tour seemed to have finished before it had started, something that had not been the case on the previous tours i have done.

---