Ahoy there landlubbers, splice up the main brace and serve me a kipper for tea. Howie and myself are now proper sailors and shall be talking in sailor-slang. I'm also going to get him a dashing Captain's hat for his birthday.

Yesterday we had a completely wonderful day doing what is generally done in the Whitsundays; we went sailing on a rather splendid, purple sailing catermoran. Truly - it was great. We had a rather early pick up at 7am and got dropped off at the marina ready for an 8am departure. The boat we were sailing on was called Camira and it was larger than we were expecting. It was also infinately more purple. Inside, the boat was lovely and the first thing we did was to take off our little flipflops and settle down on 'the trampoline' as the boat pulled out of the harbour (that's the springy bit of net hanging over the water at the front of the boat). There were various places to laze around on the boat, and laze around we did as we set sail for Daydream Island. This is a very pretty little island, where we stopped briefly to pick up some more potential sailors before making our way to Hook Island.

At Hook Island we were to go snorkelling, so we tugged on our stinger suits (which apparently block the smell of the oils from our skin that nasty jellies go for), pulled on our flippers and our masks, and were taken out on a little boat to the bay, where we were dropped off in about 5metres of water to snorkel. The problem was that the sea was rather choppy - even the boat crew said they were very difficult swimming conditions. Visibility wasn't very good because it was high tide, and all I managed to see was some coral and a purple fish with a yellow tail. It was fairly rough going so we hopped back on the boat and headed out to the open seas to Whitsunday Island.

It was, as I have mentioned, very windy and choppy, which meant that the waves were simply enormous. The skipper, Tim, said it rarely got more rough than that, and although it meant our boat could go at quite a speed (23.8knots, apparently, the fastest Tim has ever had the boat) the ride was somewhat eventful. It was so rough that you could hardly stand up at times, and most people were taking sea sickness tablets and holding little white paper bags just in case. In fact, one lady was sick, but - as she very kindly described to me, as she sat down next to me just after vomiting - 'she knew it would be like this, so it was lucky she didn't eat much breakfast this morning'. After that, I felt decidedly iffy and was quite glad when we finally got to Whitehaven Beach (see picture above).

Heather's played cricket on it; and now, Howie and I have played catch/lob the ball into the water and make Jen swim after it on Whitehaven Beach. It's somewhat legendary for being Eden-like, and so it is... The sand is blindingly white and soft, with turquoise waters that are as warm as a bath. It's great. We spent a happy time here with our snazzy stinger suits on, lolloping around in the water.

Back on the boat, we had a barbeque lunch that was simply great. Lots of meat and salad and lovely things. They had sausages, so I was happy.

We set sail again to do some fancy sailing around the island (with the boom flying across the deck every now and again and such the like). Eventually we made it back to Airlie Beach and were dropped off back to our accommodation by a friendly bus driver. Unfortunately, I don't think I've quite found my sea legs, because standing in the shower trying to scrub the salt out of my hair, it felt like the room was moving up and down. After a day spent sailing, my head was apparently still doing so, bobbing up and down like a drunk pirate. Neverthless, we had a completely marvellous day, and needless to say we slept very well last night.

Today is a scorcher, and our plans are minimal, but we are looking forward to Wednesday, when we shall be embracing our sea legs once more and voyaging out to the Great Barrier Reef. Ooh aargh!