We Are Sailing

Monday October 29th - Monday November 5th

This week has really been all about The Whitsundays sailing trip that we've just completed. Three days spent aboard a 67ft racing trimaran, Avatar, sailing around some of the 74 Whitsunday Islands. We've had a fantastic trip and made some good friends from the people that were with us onboard. As with places like Cairns there are so many tours to choose from that you're always a little worried that you might have made the wrong choice but there was no problems with ours from the moment we got onboard on Saturday morning.

The weather was set fair, well actually it was great. Blue skies and flat calm seas greeted us as we pottered slowly along getting to know the other guys onboard, half of which were German, with some other Brits, an Italian, a Pole and an American making up a good mix of people. Being a trimaran there was plenty of room on the boat to relax in the sunshine on the deck or on one of the two huge nets that were strung between the hulls of the boat. I've always wanted to just relax on one of those and now I've done it twice in 3 weeks.

The Whitsundays were another of Captain Cook's discoveries, on a Sunday hence the name, and consist of islands that range from a small rock to Whitsunday Island itself which is 11000ha in size. You can go ashore and camp on some of the islands but we'd gone for the luxury option, well a mattress down a hole in one of the outside hulls. I think even an estate agent would have struggled to describe it as anything other than bijou. At least we could have the hatch open at night and look up at the stars though.

The Great Barrier Reef does extend as far down as here but it is a bit further offshore than the islands. However, there is still good snorkelling to be had amongst coral around the islands (you get a greater diversity of coral here because of cooler waters) and we were able to have a few snorkels around Whitsunday Island and Black Island. On the final day I decided to relax onboard while Rach went snorkelling off Langford Reef and had the chance to follow some turtles around, which was pretty amazing. You get a good glimpse of them on the surface as well when they lazily come up for some air before going back down under the water.

As well as the snorkelling and general relaxing we also got ashore to go and spend some time on Whitehaven Beach. This is one of the most well-known beaches in the world (if you're into that sort of thing) as the sand consists of 99% silica making it the purest sand anywhere. When you walk on it it's like walking on flour it's so fine and soft. It's also very white. We spent a good bit of time on the beach here and in the water playing volleyball, although we struggled to look good, not only because of a lack of skill but because of needing to wear stinger suits. These are basically all in one lycra suits that protect you from the jellyfish that are now in the waters meaning that we're out of luck for sea swimming on the east coast from now on.

On the way back in to Airlie Beach yesterday the wind picked up enough for us to be able to sail which was a great way to end the trip, just hearing the sound of the water rushing past and the screams from people as waves crash over and through the nets soaking them as they catch some rays. It was a great trip and made even more enjoyable by the group of people onboard who we then went out for an end of trip drink with last night, which led to a couple more drinks, etc, etc. Not feeling too worse for wear this morning and we've just had some breakfast with 3 of them who were in the same hostel as us. We're both still rocking gently from side to side though hopefully as an after effect of the sailing rather than a sign that we're losing our marbles.

We have seen a lot of other things this week too as we made our way from Cairns. We visited the Tablelands again and looked at the huge fig trees that have put down hundreds of roots from the branches of other trees to create what look like huge sculptures. We also had a look at Millaa Millaa Falls, the waterfall made famous by the Timotei advert from some years back.

We've been camping all the way down so far and that's meant being able to see some more wildlife. We've had encounters with bush turkeys, kookaburras, bettongs (rat kangaroos), kangaroos and in one campsite 3 possums.

We got across to Magnetic Island as well, but only for the day, but still had the chance to find a really quiet idyllic beach that only had us and a strange naked man in a straw hat on. We sensibly based ourselves at the opposite end of the beach out of his way.

So all in all it's been a good week, not so much driving so far (there's still well over 2000km to go before we reach Sydney) but plenty of sights and wildlife seen and the scenery has been pretty spectacular. We're now going to push on south and see what we find on the way.