Australia - The Whitsunday's

We hopped on The Greyhound down to Airlie Beach in preparation for our Whitsunday's sailing extravaganza. We were pretty relieved to discover that Airlie Beach is a pretty lively beach resort so after checking into a hostel we headed out for a few schooners, bearing in mind we had a 6am alarm call the following morning to meet the crew.

The Whitsunday's are a collection of 74 islands set in the heart of Queensland's Great Barrier Reef the largest of these islands being Whitsunday Island. We had signed ourselves up for a fully chartered 3 day 2 night sailing and diving trip cruising around the islands aboard a vessel called "Kiana"

Ain't she a Beaut..?

We managed to get ourselves up on time and down to the marina where we met by John the resident dive instructor and crew member and the rest of the passengers. The majority of the other passengers were people roughly our age, also travelling and there were also few slightly older couples - all in all a good bunch.

After introductions we climbed aboard and the skipper Brent ran through the boat rules and various safety procedures - try not to get drunk and fall over board, we were only allowed to have one 2 min shower a day (anyone who knows me will appreciate how horrified I was at hearing this) and we were trained at how to use a marine toilet. Then Brent sparked the old girl up and we shimmied out of the marina. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't great so we weren't able to venture into the outer Barrier Reef so we headed for Hayman Island. It was pretty rough getting out there but it was pretty cool to be sat on deck as we crashed through the waves.

After a few hours we arrived at Hayman Island, anchored for the day, had lunch and then sat down for our first dive briefing. We were told at length of the dangers of the potentially fatal Box Jellyfish, one of the most deadly animals on earth - you don't need to be concerning yourself with Great Whites when these bad boys are in the ocean. The real bummer about the Box Jellyfish is that you don't even see it coming in the water until it's too late.

"You have virtually no chance of surviving the venomous sting, unless treated immediately. The pain is so excruciating and overwhelming that you would most likely go into shock and drown before reaching the shore." - nice

Me rocking a Stinger Suit

John went on to "highly recommend" we all use full length "Stinger Suits" complete with a hood to help protect ourselves - you have never seen people squeeze themselves into something so quickly in all your life! Our first dive wasn't great, I had never dived in such bad visibility (it was about 5 meters) so you had to really stick with your dive buddy but having said that it was really good experience and I even made myself a little friend.

Me with a Sea cucumber

The evening was spent chilling out on deck and appreciating the scenery, we saw some pretty awesome sunsets.

Sunset at Hayman Island

We had the smallest cabin ever which slept 6 of us (Mark, Rich, Jules, Lisa and myself) plus we had Shirley Valentine in with us too - a scouse divorcee. mid-forties, looking for love. Shirley went to bed at 8pm every night and snored like nothing on earth, kept us all awake and then complained the following morning about not sleeping too well!

On the second day Brent treated us to some proper sailing (we had previous been powered by a motor) So we got the sails up, gave the engine a rest and glided through the water like a hot knife through butter. We arrived at Dumbell Island by lunchtime and did two more dives that afternoon, the visibility was slightly better but will pretty poor. We did see some decent coral and sealife including an enormous Napoleon Fish called Elvis. Elvis is quite the celebrity of the Whitsunday's and has no quarms in coming over for a cuddle with divers and snorkellers.

Elvis

Our third and final day was spent at Whitehaven Beach. Now I know I absolutely raved about how amazing the Perhentian Islands were in Malaysia but Whitehaven Beach is the closest we have come to beating that.

Team "Kiana" at lookout over Whitehaven Beach

Enjoying Whitehaven Beach

And then we sailed back to the marina, I spent the afternoon finishing The Da Vinci Code on deck (I recon that Dan Brown could be onto a winner there..) It's also tradition that the crew and passengers all go out for drinks that night when you reach dry land. We ended up having a great final night... well I presume it was great.... I know there was Sambuca.

Our next stop - Fraser Island.