We arrived in Airlie Beach on a Sunday with the avowed intention of staying a few days, looking around and relaxing, and only then deciding which boat trip to take around the Whitsunday Islands which lie just offshore.

The Whitsundays were named by a certain James Cook when he found them on the day of that name on June 3rd 1770. There are 74 islands in all, some big some small, some with expensive resorts on them and some deserted apart from the wildlife. They have always been on our list of places to visit in Australia.

The campsite we chose was just out of Airlie and we put up the big tent because we weren't making just an overnight stop. This was a bit of a struggle once again as the ground was hard and full of large stones which made banging in the tent pegs very hard and frustrating work.

Having got ourselves settled, we drove into Airlie to have a look at the trips on offer. We quickly found out that there were many, many to choose from - most of them subtly different to the others and most with large discounts on offer. Did we want a sailing ship or a power boat? How many nights did we want to spend on the trip? Did we want to go to the outer Great Barrier Reef, stay around the Whitsundays or both? Large vessel or small? Cheap and cheerful and packed in like sardines, or more upmarket? We picked up a load of leaflets and went to have a drink to think about it.

[Tourist Tip Number 1: Unless you want to go in the very peak season, then don't book in advance. Wait till you get to Airlie then shop around for the best possible deals - we saw some 2-for-1 offers on very nice looking boats.]

Now, I'm not at all keen on boats of any kind, to be honest, so I swiftly decided against going out as far as the reef once I heard that it could well be rough out there. After having felt a bit seasick for the first time in her life when we went whale watching in New Zealand, Katy concurred. If we were going to do the reef, we decided it would be another time.

The next decision was that we didn't fancy being packed in with a load of scummy backpackers - especially in the smaller vessels in which everyone sleeps in a single large cabin. We also fancied 2-3 nights on the water, rather than a day or overnight trip.

Eventually our deliberations kept coming back to a sailing ship called Whitsunday Magic which offered a three-night, four-day trip around the islands. The agents all spoke of it as a classy vessel, not a 'party ship' and one that served really good food. The only problem was that it was sailing the next day. Oh well, we thought, we can't have everything so bit the bullet and signed up at the reduced price - the agent threw in a couple of nights at a hostel for when we got back which helped as well.

Leaving camp the next day caused us a couple of slight annoyances. Firstly, I had bought two kangaroo steaks on Sunday. I pan-fried one that evening and must admit it was delicious - the taste was like beef but with a texture more akin to tender lamb. (I gave the second lump of kangaroo meat away to an overjoyed camper the next day as I didn't fancy it for lunch given that we were about to go to sea and I'm not the greatest of sailors.) Secondly, we had to take the big tent down only a day after struggling to put the bloody thing up! Grrrr!!!

We parked the car at a hostel/campsite/bar complex at one end of the town and headed back to buy the recommended seasickness tablets - Travacalm.

[Tourist Tip Number 2: Don't park your car directly under a palm tree which has coconuts hanging from it. This is what somebody had done two spaces away from us. As a result, they had a large coconut resting on their dashboard amid the remnants of their very smashed windscreen.]

The boat was leaving at 4pm on Monday and by 3.45pm we had been picked up from town and delivered to the vessel at the nearby marina. Well, 16 of the 18 people who had booked were present - one of the crew told us that the missing pair were on their way. Not long after 4pm two American sisters in their 50s turned up, slightly out of breath. They explained that they had booked the trip a while ago and in the meantime had lost track of the days. It was only at about 2pm that one of them had looked at the booking confirmation and discovered their mistake. As they were a couple of hundred km away from the port, that had led to a foot-on-the-floor dash. They were sure that the cost of the trip would be increased by several speeding tickets picked up on the way!

After the American sisters (Judy and Marilyn) were on board we left the harbour pretty quickly and received our briefing about what was going to happen. We also had our first sampling of the food - a selection of three types of cheese - offered up as afternoon tea. Katy and I also swallowed our first seasickness tablets.

We spent the rest of the day unpacking, exploring the 34-metre vessel (which didn't take long) and chatting to our fellow passengers. They were a fairly mixed lot overall. There were two young American guys, both called Pat - one was soon dubbed Patrick to save any confusion. Pat (not Patrick) repeatedly told everyone that he had been booked on another vessel but it had been cancelled due to lack of people and he had literally run down the street to change his booking.

Who else was there? A quiet German lad called Leon and a 40-something British guy called Rob… A couple from Glasgow and another pair from Brisbane. Oh and six British girls, most of whom seemed to come from Manchester given their accents

Happy hour started at 5pm and with the vessel beginning to emerge from completely sheltered seas, we had to decide if we wanted a drink and if so, what. Interestingly, we both came to the same conclusion - gin and tonic would help settle our stomachs. Well, tonic was originally developed as some kind of medicine wasn't it?

While up on deck we experienced an unusual sight. The sun set in the west and just a few minutes later, a full moon rose rapidly from behind Whitsunday Island in the east. It seemed as if one single disc was involved, running around 'backstage' and reappearing in its new garb.

Dinner was chicken for the meat-eaters and roasted vegetables for the veggies. It went down a treat, as did the white chocolate tart for dessert.

I don't know if it was the number of G&T's or those in combination with the seasickness tablets, but Katy was out on her feet by about 9.30pm and headed off for bed. I stayed up to play Monopoly with the two Pats and Leon. We expected a long game perhaps ending in the early hours which is what usually happens with Monopoly.

Not this time. On my second throw of the dice, I picked up a Chance card sending me to the equivalent of Mayfair. Nice one. After rapid progression on the next lap of the board, helped by a double 6, I landed on the property matching Park Lane. In effect the game was over at that point, as no-one else had a complete set to challenge me. One of the players hadn't even managed to get once round the board by that point! We played on, but the result was a foregone conclusion and I won in under an hour. Must be some kind of record!

After that we played poker for a while and my luck continued for the first part of the game when I won the first half-dozen hands in a row. Luckily we were only playing for chips rather than money, because I then proceeded to lose the lot to Pat. Oh well.

The next morning we got up to face a huge breakfast - not just the normal cereals, fruit and toast, but scrambled eggs with spinach as sell. The sea was flat calm but even so I'd taken another tablet so felt fine and tucked in. I was getting to enjoy being on this boat.

We were anchored in Blue Pearl Bay on Hook Island and most of the group went snorkelling and/or diving. I didn't fancy either of them, water-wimp that I am, and Katy also declined on the grounds that it was a bit cold and that there were lots of fish swimming around under the surface! (For those of you not aware, Katy has a fish phobia. Given that I don't like boats or water, you may well ask yourselves what the hell we were doing on this trip!)

Instead, the two of us and Marilyn headed out on boat with some glass panels on the bottom - it was too small to dignify with the title of 'glass-bottomed boat'. Katy was glad she hadn't gone in the water when she saw shoals of fish swimming around among the coral. However, she took some heart from the fact that at the next stop there were meant to be fewer fish and better coral.

After we went back on board the Magic, we found the ship deserted when Marilyn disappeared into her cabin. So we disported ourselves around the boat, taking photos and pretending we had taken her on a private charter!

When everyone else returned, we had a huge chocolate cake for our morning snack. It had a candle in it because it was the birthday of one of the Manchester girls. We then sailed on for a while around Hook Island to Luncheon Bay where we - quite appropriately - had, er, lunch! (Buffet style, featuring huge prawns and a special dish for Katy. Seconds was had.)

There was more snorkelling in the afternoon and this time Katy plucked up her courage and joined in, pushing aside the threat posed by a few minnows. I helped her into her wetsuit after she tried to put it on the wrong way round and she descended the ladder into the rubber dinghy which took the snorkellers to the beach. While waiting for her return, I sat and read in the sun on the deck. Would she enjoy it? Would she run screaming from the water when approached by an innocent tiddler?

In the event, Katy really enjoyed her first ever snorkel. It took her a while to breathe properly, but once she managed that she experienced what she described as a whole new world. She said it didn't seem real and equated it to watching the TV in that everything looked different. There were lots of brightly coloured stripy fish, rainbow designs and so on. She thinks one was a Clown fish, like in Finding Nemo. There were also many types of coral in differing shapes - big domes that looked like brains, branches like on a tree, and soft coral which moved in the current. The colours also differed, though not as wildly as the fish.

Katy used something called a 'noodle' which is just a four-foot length of foam to give added buoyancy. This allowed her to float around with her face in the water, moving above the coral while looking at fish below. When approached by one of them, she just moved her arms and not surprisingly the fish swam off. The phobia was, if not conquered, at least contained.

The Manchester girls didn't go in the water in the afternoon because it was the birthday of one of their number and they were getting dressed up as pirates for a party. Moustaches 'a la Johnny Depp' were drawn on faces using make-up, scarves wound around heads, wigs donned, a skull-and-crossbones hoisted and plastic cutlasses brandished - all to the sound of many an 'Arrr, Jim lad'!

The merriment increased in tempo and volume when happy hour kicked in again and the girls proceeded to get properly stuck into the cocktails in honour of Captain Jack Daniels, as the birthday girl had dubbed herself. For what they dubbed her first mate, you need to recall the (possibly apocryphal) name of Captain Pugwash's sidekick!

For those more interested in the food than the drink, we had a choice for dinner of fish (barramundi) or rib-eye steak (Katy had various vegetables cooked in a posh fashion), followed by panacotta.

After dinner the pirates disappeared with the cocktails up onto the top deck, presumably to hang someone from the yardarm (whatever that is). Down below, several of us tried to learn a new card game called a******, a drinking game much beloved of students. One problem with picking it up was that Pat was rubbish at explaining the rules. The other was that the rest of us had also been sampling the cocktails, so probably weren't at our most perceptive.

We had anchored overnight at Tongue Bay on Whitsunday Island and first thing in the morning we were ferried over in the small rubber dinghy to the island itself. It was noticeable that the 'pirates' seemed a little the worse for wear. After a brief walk through the bush, we emerged to see what can only be described as the trip's 'money shot' - a view of the brilliant white sand and deep blue sea of Whitehaven Beach.

Whitehaven is meant to be one of the best beaches in the world (top four or top ten, depending on which list you look at) and it's not hard to understand why. It does indeed look spectacularly pretty, more like an artist's idyllic painting than reality. The colours were indeed both brilliant and deep and apparently the shape of the sand changes constantly with time and tide.

After a time taking photos, we descended to Hill Inlet where we got to walk on the sand. To our surprise, it was extremely powdery and squeaked as we walked upon it. We had seen a similarly coloured beach in the far north of New Zealand, but this was much finer in texture. The guide told us that they used sand from Whitehaven to make the Hubble telescope because of the 98% purity of the silica.

We spent a couple of hours walking on the sand and paddling in the water. Some brave souls went in a little deeper, which was fine if they kept on their wetsuits but a little foolhardy if not because of the risk of getting stung by jellyfish.

After that, we returned to the Magic for another huge and excellent buffet lunch, once again featuring prawns though this time in a spicy noodle dish. Just about everybody went back for seconds of some kind.

In the afternoon we sailed off for a while to Cateran Bay on Border Island where there was more snorkelling. The water was deeper here and the coral therefore much bigger. The session was shorter than either of the previous ones because the water was colder. Surprisingly, however, Katy wasn't the first one back into the boat!

As it was our last evening, we all got well stuck into happy hour and washed down dinner (seafood risotto or lamb) with some wine. The atmosphere continued to hum, further fuelled when Judy (one of the two American sisters) generously bought a few bottles of fizz for the whole company. This helped everyone's feeling of bonhomie, but didn't mean any improvement in our understanding of the rules of a******!

During the evening we discovered that Judy had been married into the Jefferson family (as in Thomas Jefferson, architect of the American constitution) and that Marilyn had once been a drill instructor in the US navy. This fascinated Katy, who once considered joining the army - largely because of her love of the film Private Benjamin. Jealous squeals erupted from her as Marilyn explained how she had been stationed in exotic locations such as Hawaii and Guam.

Despite Marilyn's military past, she proved not quite up to the challenge of drinking her sister's wine. On getting to her feet after the card game finished, she promptly collapsed onto the deck, giving her head what sounded like a nasty bang. These ex-military types must be used to being hit on the skull, however, because she suffered no ill-effects the next morning. Apart from a hangover of course, and in that she wasn't alone by any means!

During this lengthy blog, you will have noticed a couple of references to seasickness tablets and perhaps to the water being like glass. After a couple of days, we had stopped taking the pills as there was hardly a wave to send our stomachs churning. And that still seemed to be the case on the final morning as we consumed our last, excellent breakfast featuring (of course) bacon and eggs.

Our first task was to land at Nara Inlet back on Hook Island to look at some very simple paintings made by the local Ngaro tribe of aborigines many years ago. They weren't particularly impressive and we need to go to somewhere like the Kakadu national park to see better examples. After that, it was back on board for our final run back to port at Airlie Beach.

Unfortunately, the wind had started to blow and we were on a section of water and keeping to a schedule which meant we couldn't hide from the waves. We started to get tossed around, lurching from wave to wave. The Manchester girls were playing cards and one of them was heard to say that the sensation was actually quite fun. If it was, then it swiftly lost its appeal as the game broke up and the participants headed for fresh air on deck.

Katy and I had a seasickness tablet, though too late for one of us. Against all the odds, however, it wasn't me who suffered most but Katy - who never used to get seasick until six months ago.

We parked ourselves on the aft deck to get the benefit of the air as we bounced through and over the white-capped waves. Several people were distinctly pale, some of them lying down in an attempt to hold onto their breakfast. It was quite cold, however, and Katy eventually went inside. From there, she made the mistake of going down to our cabin to get a drink of water. Everyone knows you shouldn't go below if you feel seasick and the result was inevitable.

Below deck, the real Katy must obviously have been replaced by a disgusting pale-faced creature with sunken eyes and shambling gait. Yes, it resembled her, but only slightly. If you have seen Lord Of The Rings, think of Gollum for the nearest point of similarity. As this vision of awfulness staggered up the stairs, it croaked "I don't feel very well". Well, duh!!!

She was heading for the wrong side of the ship - the side where if she vomited, the wind would immediately blow it back all over her (and the rest of us, in all probability). "That way, go that way!" I shouted at her frantically as I indicated the other rail, but Gollum-Katy had the intellectual processes of a rather dim Orc by this stage (another LotR reference - think of a retarded three-year-old if you haven't read the books or seen the films).

Gollum-Katy stumbled in my direction and I had a horrible vision of her vomiting all over me. Luckily, there was a waste bin to hand. Salvation! I took the top off and pointed the creature at the target. "In there, in there!" I cried. The vision of vileness sank to its knees and proceeded to throw up its (vegetarian) breakfast into the bin - well, most of it anyway. Some went on the deck. And just a little into Gollum's clothes and into its hair. Just a little, honest.

Ironically, the eruption had occurred only a few minutes before the waves subsided as we reached the shelter of one of the nearby islands. After that, it was fairly smooth sailing into port and the other passengers struggled upright as their own crises passed. Even Gollum was banished as Katy re-took control of her body.

That was pretty much it, in fact. We berthed, tied up and took photos of our fellow passengers and crew for posterity. The two of us headed into town for our two free nights at Magnums backpackers hostel where Katy promptly took another seasickness tablet as the room was still going round and round a little, then went to sleep. By the time she awoke, she was fine.

Despite the final couple of hours, everyone on board agreed it had been an exceptional trip. The cost of AU$500 (inc taxes) seemed to be remarkable value for what you got, especially given the quality of the food. If you are in the islands and want to go out on a boat, we can thoroughly recommend the Whitsunday Magic.

Richard