Day 1
We set sail on our beautiful, classic offshore, wooden racing yacht, Enid, from Airlie Beach early on Sunday morning, with our fab crew of Skip, Jayson and Rowan.
Very immediately, Chris realised there were some local girls on board, so already there was an up to the trip (except pool Lisa got the brunt of Chris’s abuse being a scouse :( lol)
We left Abel Point Marina and headed out past North and South Molle Islands, then we backed up on ourselves and headed for the gap between Hook Island and Whitsunday Island. As we were sailing along, we saw a whale and its foal 200m from the boat. Lots of excitement and happy snapping!
We passed through the gap between the islands and anchored at Tongue Bay on Whitsunday Island and were taken by tender to the shore, where Jayson took us on an informative walk up to the lookout over Whitehaven Beach. This lookout is the most photographed view in Australia!
Once back on board the boat, we set off for Whitehaven Beach which was going to be our home for the evening.
Whilst dinner was being prepared, we all were taken ashore and played around on the beach. The beach is voted number 1 beach in the world, especially as the sand is the purest sand at 98.4% silica (to anyone that doesn’t understand this, it means its very white and very fine and you can make the lense for the Hubble telescope out of it!). It also squeeked under your feet when you walked on it :)
We had dinner and a few drinks with our fellow sailors who were a lot of fun (except the boring frenchies who were in bed at 9 every night and didn’t like loud music lol)!!!
Day 2
After breakfast, everyone went back ashore to Whitehaven Beach to explore a bit more. Naomi and Sally choose to swim to shore from the boat which was lovely and warm.
We went up to the lookout as part of the exploring and played some beach footy.
Then it was off to go on our first snorkelling trip. We can’t remember the name of the bay/reef we snorkelled on but the fish were amazing. To name but a few of the rarer and more amazing kind we saw:
Sooty Grunter; Garfish (which has a long nose like a swordfish); striped butterfish (looks like a zebra); butterdream (diamond fish); parrotfish; batfish; coral trout; reef shark; phospherescent plankton etc etc etc
As we came back to the boat, Chris was eager beaver and jumped out of the tender as the crew were feeding some huge batfish, so Chris got to swim with them! Very awesome to watch!
After we all dried off and warmed up, we all watched the sunset in the bay we were in as its the only place on the East coast where you can watch the sunset over the sea!
That evening we had a great green thai curry and then all decided to have a bit of a drink and boogie (which we do best!).
At the end of the evening, the two of us went to the front of the boat to star gaze. The night sky was incredible. Neither of us had ever seen so many stars in the night sky before. Naomi saw her fist ever shooting star! But it wasn’t just the shooting stars lighting up, phospherescent plankton were making the sea below us light up too :)
Day 3
Waking up today was not a pleasant experience as the boat was swaying a lot in the wind.
After breakfast, the crew took a small boat to shore to snorkel which included Chris. It was very cold and windy and they didn’t snorkel for long. But in that time, Chris managed to see a 1.5-2m reef shark, but was so in awe (or possibly scared witless lol) of it that he forgot to use the camera lol!
We then set sail to out next snorkelling destination on Hayman Island. We were going to go to Hook Island, but where the weather was so bad, we needed to go somewhere out of the wind.
We were 2 of only 3 people that went snorkelling here as everyone else was too cold and being wimps lol. It was a very different underwater setting here. The coral was amazing and so colourful, but you only found the fish on the reef shelf. There were still a lot of fish there but not anything like yesterday. We ended up swimming back to the boat from the reef and taking some nice pictures of the boat too. The only reason we headed back was because it was lunchtime lol!
And unfortunately after lunch, we had a very choppy trip back to dry land :( No one wanted to leave as we had all had such a great time. But best thing was, we were all meeting up for after-tour drinks that night woop woop!
As everyone needed to get back to town, we offered everyone a lift in the campervan (yes everyone, all 8 people in total!). We crammed everyone in, went to turn the engine on, and it was completely flat :( we had left a light on inside the van for 3 days :( we tried to bump start it by pushing it round the car park a few times, but then gave up and got some one to jump start us :) and the fun bus was off.
We dropped everyone off in town, did a few jobs, checked in at the campsite and got ready to go to Phoenix Bar and meet everyone. Phoenix had a deal for the night, spend $5 on alcohol and get half a Dominoes pizza for free. Winner! Did some boogying, said our goodbyes, and that was it for our fun in Airlie and the Whitsundays!
Will never forget such a beautiful and fun trip :)
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