Sailing in the Whitsundays

The Whitsundays are an archipelago of 109 islands just off the coast of Australia (of which only 74 are named) that are reknowned for their natural beauty. The most famous of the Australian beaches is Whitehaven Beach which is over 9km long of pure white silica sand and crystal clear blue waters.


We literally had 30sec of "sunshine" to take this picture!






We stayed at the Backpackers by the Bay in Airlie Beach. Airlie was one of my favorite stops along the coast because it was small enough to familiarize yourself with the city in a day, but had 3 or 4 open air beer gardens, small restaurants, shopping, and a really nice man-made lagoon. I'm sure it helped that the first day in Airlie was one of the most beautiful days we've seen in Australia and we spent it laying in the sunshine by the lagoon.



What a nice lagoon! This was such a beautiful day in Oz!





Wednesday we got up early to meet our skipper and deckie for our 3 day/2 night sailing trip. We opted for the nicest of the sailing packages because we really wanted a relaxing trip as opposed to the "party scene" that some of the other ships offered. Our yacht was called the Ileola and was a classic 18 metre, 3 masted schooner, launched in 1952 and had sailed around the world something like 15 times!





Ola and Natalie (Sweden), Rob (Holland), and Meg




The trip started out with crap weather and it never improved. I'm talking the clouds were so thick that there was no sign of the sun for 3 days. I didn't think it was possible for clouds to block out that much light! The sad thing is that it not only affected the smoothness of the ride (as we were all a little sea sick from the huge swells) but it also changed the color of the water from a crystal clear blue color to a murky deep blue/green. Therefore the visibility duing snorkeling on the reef was poor and the water/islands didn't look nearly as beautiful as the postcards!



Me, Meg and a Fish!





There were 12 people plus a skipper (Mark) and a deckie/chef (Phil) on the boat. The two things that made up for the crap weather were the fabulous gourmet-style Italian cooking and the company. There was a couple from Sweden and one from Germany, and two guys from Holland, as well as a woman from England, and a girl with her parents from Ireland. Good times and a ton of laughs. Meagan and I had a blast teaching new words to the Dutch and the Germans (ex. Procrastinate...every morning I tested them to see if they remembered the word!)





Me, Rob, Meg, and Dennis in our Stinger Suits ... we looked like superhero's .... "Stinger-Man!"






We spent most of the time cruising around Whitsunday Island (the biggest of the archipelago), and docked in Cid Harbour, Turtle Bay, Tongue Bay, Hill Inlet, snorkeled at Dumbbell, and another location. There was such beautiful coral on the reef!! The colors were magnificant shades of pink, lime green, orange, purple, and red. Just a taste of what was to come in my SCUBA adventure.



There were some clams (blue) big enough to consume me! They would close up when you touched them.



The sleeping accomodations were quite small but overall, the boat was spacious enough for all of us. Due to the poor weather, I came back whiter than before but with one more book under belt. I seriously read whenever I wasn't being social and finished an entire book in no time at all.


Christian, Natalie, Ola, Me, Meg, Heather, and Elaine