Still not got used to spending a night on a bus, so arrived in Airlie Beach to blazing hot sunshine rather bleary eyed. I really felt for Hannah and Laura (Canadians) who were heading straight off on their Whitsundays sailing trip! As it was I spent Thursday and Friday lazing about in the lagoon (there's strictly no swimming in the sea in Airlie because of stingers!) and catching up with people from down the road.

Saturday dawned another beautiful day as we set sail on Condor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condor_(yacht) and headed out to the Whitsunday islands. There was about 22 passengers and 5 crew onboard (Skipper = Nelson, twin deckhands = Daniel and Mark and 2 others/trainees = Gabby and Yob). I already knew a few people onboard including the 4 Dutch girls (Danielle, Inge, Linda and Joyce) who I had shared a car with on Fraser Island, Becky and Katy a couple of English girls I had met in Rainbow Beach and Linda a German girl who I had met pretty much everywhere from Byron onwards! Most of the other people were also cool, a couple were annoying, but luckily the boat was big enough! We anchored for the night with quite a few other boats with the promise of a swim off the beach in the morning and cracked open the beers/goon/G&T's! A bunch of us decided to sleep up on deck as it was stiffling below - a great idea until the rain started... and then the wind which blew the rain in under the tarpaulin and the rain ran along the boom and dripped on the deck... We all soon dived back to our bunks below!

Unfortunately, the weather had not cleared up on Sunday. We got dressed into our stinger suits accessorised with bright yellow raincoats and headed over to the island to walk over to Whitehaven Beach. Needless to say in pouring rain it doesn't quite look like Australia's best beach and like the postcards!!! We made the most of it swimming in the waves and checking out the stingrays and little sharks on the other side of the beach, but not many photos were taken! We then sailed around to a more secluded spot for lunch, it was fairly rough, but suprisingly only one person was sick (no, not me!) In the afternoon I went diving whilst everyone else went snorkling. It was a nice dive, not incredible, but I did see a huge potato cod and a lot of fish. We moved to another snorkling spot off the beach where the "Where the bloody hell are you?" advert was filmed and saw a load more rays and fish in amongst the coral.

No one even attempted to sleep on deck on Sunday night, although a glimpse of sun was seen just as it was setting! It was pretty windy on Monday morning still so we had a great sail back to Airlie Beach and (nearly) remained dry!

Despite the weather it was still a fabulous trip and we all had a great time celebrating out in Airlie Beach on Monday night...