This morning was the first morning we woke up to frost on the windscreen- a sign of the decreasing temperature as we go down further south.

On the drive to Airlie Beach, I invented a game where you have to make a story using the names of the creek. The beginning went something like:

After (breakfast), Jane and Paul had a (little goodbye) before going to work. Paul was working on some (magnetic) research and Jane had to rush to work, as she had a very important meeting with (Euri) Geller, but she was a bit flustered as she was still a bit (sandy) from the beach the day before. She wondered whether it was a good idea to use her (kangaroo) boxing pen, since Euri's partner, Steven (Yates), was going to join them.

The brackets indicate the names of the creeks, and Steven Yates is the waiter from The King Alfred's head who has the twin brother.

It was a shame we were in a rush to get to Airlie Beach (although it paid off as we arrived with plenty of time to spare, and so went for a coffee in Hungry Jacks, and had a shower, but we thought it would be best to be on the safe side) as Bowen sounds like it would have been a nice place to stop and visit.

We parked in the Nomads car park for $5 a night, and then went to check in for the Whitsunday trip. On the way back, we stopped in City Beach so I could buy flip flops (and so we could both get tempted by buying new tops).

We walked to the pier, and started talking to a young German couple, Yamina and Markus, who were on our boat, Adventurer. Yamina was in the middle of an International Business and Marketing degree and so had been on an internship for a telecommunications company in Sydney, and now they were travelling. Markus was very quiet but this was possibly because he hadn't been here as long and so his English wasn't as good.

Whilst we were chatting to them, another couple sidled up to us and said "Don't you know Guy?" It was Martin, who was the manager of NJoy! (The hostel we stayed in the first 2 nights in Australia, and where Guy worked before coming to Reef) and his German girlfriend Sabina (they had met on an apple farm out here).

We probably didn't pick the best boat as we were the only non-couple, but our other fellow adventurers were:

· Lutz and Gabi; a German couple in their 50-60's who were very nice. Lutz spoke very good English, and they seemed to have travelled to a lot of countries- India five times, Alaska and an island off Ecuador (where their daughter spent some times for her uni course) were amongst a few. Gabi was the least English speaker of the group and seemed a bit clumsy.

· Jeff and Tara; live in Sydney. Tara got sent there with work from Houston, Texas and liked it so much she stayed. Jeff is from Vancouver

· Katie and Ryan; lived in Brisbane for 2 months because Katie got a grant (including flights, accommodation and a wage) to do some research in cell tissue for her PhD here. Michael is a mechanical engineer. They're both from Colorado. Katie was gluten and dairy intolerant.

Our captain (who sailed the catamaran) was Sam who was quite funny and our 'boat mum' was Charlie, who was slightly unfriendly.

Despite the woman at check in telling us we didn't get food there was a combination of beef, chicken and veggie wraps with crisps when we got on the boat at 2, and then carrot, celery and cheese crudités with tzatziki and a sundried tomato dip, crackers and Australian frankfurter for an afternoon 'snack' and for dinner we had Thai chicken curry, rice, bread and feta salad, followed by cookies and cream cheesecake.

There wasn't any activity to do today, just chat and sunbathe as we sailed to our stopping point for the night. The boat had blue lights onto lure fish in, and so it was quite cool to see them jump out the water, but we didn't see any dolphins like we were hoping.