Monday October 20th - Whitsunday Island Trip

I got back today from my sailing trip around the Whitsunday Islands. It was fantastic. The Whitsundays are a group of 74 islands, to the east of Australia, that's surrounded by the Great Barrier Reef. We left on Saturday at lunchtime, then sailed for a few hours to get out to the Whitsundays. The name of our boat was Powerplay. It was pretty rough on the way out, and half the boat were feeling ill!! We eventually arrived though, and got ready to go out into the water. This was at a bay called Luncheon bay. I went snorkelling here. I did try scuba diving, but it's not for me!!! I'm sticking to the snorkelling. It was a fantastic. We saw loads of fish and coral. It was like swimming in a tropical fish tank. Some of the fish were pretty big, and would just swim up to you.

After that we headed back on the boat for a snack of cheese and crackers, and then settled for the night. We all took alcohol on with us so we could drink that, and had barbequed chicken and salad for food. After getting on the boat, they started showing people to their room. Me and Sinead were 2 of the last ones to be shown, and when they came to us in the saloon (the lounge of the boat) they basically said you are sleeping here. We asked where and they said the table. We both looked at each other and laughed thinking that they were joking, but they were serious. They could lower the table, put a mattress on it and that was a queen size bed for me and Sinead to share for the night. There were 2 tables in the saloon, and 2 crew members were sleeping on the other one!! There were also 4 girls sleeping above us on top of the back of the chairs. Sleeping where we were though meant that we had no shelter because you walked right out from the room onto the deck. We just kept laughing at this, but it turned out that we had a much better deak than everyone else. They all had tiny rooms, that were just a bed basically. It was so stuffy downstairs, that everyone woke up the next morning feeling pretty rough. I had a pretty ok night sleep considering it got really blustery during the night and the boat was really rocking.

The next morning the skipper started moving around at 5:30 getting things ready to move on. She actually thought it was 6:30, and the rest of the crew weren't amused. It meant though that we got moving earlier so could fit more into the day. We went snorkelling again at another bay that morning after breakfast, which was really good again, though it did start raining, got quite blustery and cold!! After that we travelled down to tongue bay, and Whitehaven beach, which is stunning. Whitehaven beach has got the softest sand - 98% Silica. Apparently it is the most photographed beach in Australia. It really was stunning. We stayed around on the beach for a while taking silly photos of us posing and of the views, and then headed back to the boat ready to sail to our sleep destination fo the night. After getting back, we had food, a few drinks and a really good laugh. There happened to be 5 Irish people onboard, and we all laughed so much!! The crew were taking photos of the trip, and every evening we watched a slideshow of the photos. That night I had a really good night sleep. It apparently rained hard during the night, everyone downstairs heard it but me and Sinead were quite happy upstairs and didn't hear a thing. We were pretty much outside and didn't hear anything. Woke up at 6am then ready to go for a walk on another beach that morning. We left the boat at 6:30 to go for a short 1km walk that took us from one beach to another. The walk reminded me of Autumn at home because it was a narrow track and it was covered with brown, orange and yellow leaves that had fallen off the trees.

After the walk and breakfast, we headed back to Airlie Beach, which was the end of our trip!! It was a fantastic few days. Don't think I've laughed that much in ages!! And saw some fantastic and stunning sights. Everyone from the boat is meeting up for drinks and a bit of food tonight, so that'll be good.