Whitsundays Sailing Trip on the New Horizon Boat

26/01/2009 - 28/01/2009

We had to meet at Abel point, Airlie Beach at 2:40pm and as usual we were running late. We put our backpacks away into storage and on the way down to the marina bought some beer for our trip! It was so hot and as we were all laden with cans of beer and ice cubes we arrived slightly late looking red faced!

Not long after arriving our guide, Dave, gathered us together to introduce himself. He was a bit of a character to say the least and wanted us to be as excited as possible! There were roughly 30 of us going on the trip in total, with a mix of English, Irish, German and Sweedish.

We followed Dave along to the anchored boat, The New Horizon where we had to take our 'thongs' (flipflops) off to board. We set sail not long after and soon were enjoying the warm breeze and the sunshine.

The first night was a get to know each other night with no other activities planned than to drink and play games! It was a lot of fun, especially when Dave made a huge pot of punch out of no doubt left over alcohol from the last sailing trip crew!

People weren't quite so cheery and smiley the next morning however, when we were told to be up by 7am. I was up and about but unfortunately for Mel and Nicole, they weren't and had the pleasure of Dave jumping into bed with them and scaring them!

Breakfast managed to sober up a few people but others were less fortunate, claiming sea sickness which in fact was probably a severe hangover. It wasn't a pleasant sight seeing a few hunched over the railing!

We had set sail during breakfast and soon arrived at Tongue Bay where Whitehaven beach is, the 2nd most beautiful beach in the world. We were transfered across to the island by dingy where we were warming met by hundreds of huge March flies also known as vampire flies, aargh!!

We headed first to the Hill Inlet lookout point which gave us our first view over Whitehaven beach! It truely was beautiful.

We then walked 500m down to the beach. The sand is minute grains of quartz and as the information board informed us, it has been assayed at 99.89% pure. This gives the sand a really powdery feel to it. Dave had told us to make use of its properties and exfoliate, brush our teeth and clean any jewelery! Nicole and Mel were brave enough to brush their teeth but then spent the next 5 minutes trying to spit out all the sand!

The direction of the water flow opposes each other around Whitehaven beach because of the lay of the land and passage way between islands. This creates a whirl pool effect that creates mini beach stretches out in the middle of the sea. I paddled over to a stretch to get my photo taken but had to hurry back as the tide was quickly coming back in and making the paddle more of a wade!

Later back on the boat we sailed to the Hook island where we stopped at Luncheon Bay. It was here that i did my first scuba dive! I was extremely nervous about it, especially with the worry over the pressure difference on my ears. Dave however was very serious when it came to dive and taught us everything we would need to know for the 40min dive! We learnt the different hand signals if you were happy and ok, if you were struggling, if we could touch something etc. We were briefed on the boat, then at the beach where we all had to demonstrate three things. One that we could empty water out of the face mask under water, two that we could remove the mouth piece, release air and then insert the mouthpiece again getting rid of water in it and thirdly that we could equilise our ears for the change in pressure. I ofund this the most difficult and couldn't get them to pop by holding my nose and blowing. Dave suggested holding my nose and swallowing and this was the technique for me!

Without further delay Dave waved at us to follow him. We were swimming past chain jellyfish which we were told could not sting us. Just as well because people were having a jellyfish fight behind us and throwing them at each other like snowballs!

We swam slowly deeper and deeper, my ears were extremely painful at one point and i wanted to return immediately to the surface. However Dave made me stop and try to wait until they eased. They did and although uncomfortable i continued on not wanting to be distracted away from the coral and fish. We started to see some beautifully coloured fish of all sizes. We stopped to stroke an oranged hairy branch of coral that felt so soft! The coral was all sorts of colours, orange, purple, blue, brown, yellow. It was gently swaying with the current and as we drifted passed we could see smaller creatures and fish hiding in amoungst it! I was so glad to have my underwater camera with me. The first picture i tried to take however, i held the camera in front of me expecting to see a digital display of what i was about to photograph! Im not sure how well the pictures will come out but im looking forward to the one that Dave took of Nicole, Bernie (a girl from Ireland) and I.

We continued on and i felt as though we were coming into shallow water and when i looked ahead Dave was actually standing up on his feet...we were back at the beach, haha!! It was such a brilliant experience and over so quickly. It really has given me a taste to try and dive again.

The boat left Luncheon Bay and next anchored at Blue Pearl Bay, which is on the western shores of the exotic and expensive Hayman Island. There were no more activities for the evening, only to have tea and socialise! People were not quite as lively as the night before, probably the shock of having to get up at 7am! Later that night we saw large trivali fish swimming around the boat trying to feed and then even more spectacularly, a dolphin with a small shark in tow!

Next morning, our final day on the sailing trip, we awoke again at 7am and after having a quick breakfast headed straight into the sea at Blue Pearl Bay. Mel and I snorkelled for just over an hour. The water here is deep just off the fringing reef, gradually shelving to the shore while it meanders it's way around countless coral ledges. We saw the resident Maori Wrasse fish,Elvis who is actually female. She was huge and swum right past me..i let out a small scream and her eyes moved up to look at me, as if she was raising her eyebrows too and then she changed direction away. We saw more fish, different ones plus a fish camoflaged as a rock!

Unfortunately there was slight drizzle, which didnt ruin the experience or colour of snorkelling but it did make us really cold and we had to return to the boat to get out of our stinger suits and warm up.

We had lunch and then it was time to return back to Airlie beach and end what was a fantastic trip.