I'm writing this blog whilst still in Australia and when I say that I sailed the Whitsundays to people out here they all understand, they know what the Whitsundays are and what a fun experience it is to sail around them - especially when they ask me the standard question of "what boat did you go on?" and I reply by saying "the big one, you know The Clipper?" they all do a cheeky grin and say - "isn't that the party boat?".Why yes it is and what a party it was.

So to get to the Whitsunday Islands I caught a greyhound from 1770 to Airlie beach.Arlie beach is a little sea side town with a main street consisting of less than 100 buildings, you can walk the town end to end in around 10 minutes it's that quaint.I loved it though; it had a great feel about it, a kind of sunny happy feel which the Ozzy's do so well.

The first day of my 3 day Whitsundays came in two parts, in part one I read my book in the sun at the lagoon.Airlie beach lagoon overlooks the ocean and along with the odd palm tree framing the scene the view is just lovely.At lunch I decided to make a move and get a bite to eat before I headed to the harbour for 2pm to board the Clipper along with the other 50 people who would be on my trip with me.At the café I noticed 10 girls sat together all with bags that didn't have zips (a weird rule the Clipper has and a tell-tale sign that they were going on the clipper) and so I walked over and said hi - turned out I was correct and this big group of girls would be on the boat with me!

In part two we met the rest of the people who would be going on our boat, everyone was young like us and all game for a great time.That afternoon I sat on the huge deck of the boat chatting to everyone and listening as the cheeky crew introduced themselves, the boat and explained the aims and highlights of the trip - I couldn't wait to get started and we did that night!

But before any of that I must tell you about the little surprise person who was sitting behind me on the deck.As I was chatting to the girls we all watched the sun set over the islands, giving us all a content grin when I heard a girl say, "hey do any of you know an English girl named Laura Jones?" obviously my ears pricked up and I turned to meet the eyes of a lovely little Canadian girl named Steffi.The clue as to who she is was in where she is from, Canada … remember my blogs from Vietnam where I travelled with 2 amazing Canadian girls? Well Steffi was Vietnam Hannah's friend from home! I was so pleased because she had the same sense of humour as Hannah and amber and the accent - it was like my lovely Vietnam girls were there.

So that first night the crew decided we all need to James BOND and so after they fed us a delicious meal of white fish and mash told us to prepare for some light hearted gaming fun.We all got into teams of 8, my team consisted of a load of people I had never met but they were all a hell of a lot of fun but also extremely competitive - which made it even worse when we scored minus 1 before the games had even begun! That's right the boys being boys had gone and picked a name which made us all look like racists that can't spell! The crew weren't impressed, oops!

That night I drank goon on the top deck of a massive boat whilst competing in games such as the orange pass, the snorkel blow job and my least favourite the veggie mite challenge - which was where a poor fool of a boy had to lick veggie mite out of my belly button! Ew I smelt like rotten veg all night because of that.

I had a great night and topped it off with some dancing under the stars out on the open water before hitting my bunk - quite literally , I forgot how small the cabins were and walked head first into my bunk bed!

Day 2 we all woke early to the sound of Steve the skipper singing a Hawaiian type song outside our cabins, it was sunrise which meant a big buffet breakfast with everyone before we got flung into a dingy and zoomed across to an island.Now I hadn't really research the Whitsundays before I got there but I still had 1 very famous image in my head and after a little climb up a flipping huge mountain - ok not that huge but after a night of goon it was almost impossible to make my legs move, I finally got to see the image in my head but in real life.From a lookout point I saw Whitehaven beach, one of the cleanest in the world! Its bright white and swirls out into an ocean of aqua and sapphire.I was in awe, it was just so perfect it couldn't be real, so we after some picture moments we all rushed down the hill and onto the beach its self with our cameras clicking away.I spent a couple of hours on that beach, the weather was beautifully clear and sunny but not boiling, which meant that the water is cold so I only went in for a dip, plus every time I got into the water I had to put on a stinger suite (wet suit to stop the jellyfish getting to you - they are deadly in oz, in fact everything seems deadly in oz, if it's not a jelly fish in the water, it's a croc getting you at the edge of the water, or a snake in the grass on the way home, or if you do make it back there could be a spider waiting in your show!) Let's face it I'm not exactly Lara croft and so me donning a wet suite doesn't make me look exciting and adventurous nope it makes me look like a weeble or possibly Vanessa felts - anyway people giggled at me that's all I'm saying lol

But looking like I've been shrink rapped in black rubber is worth it because when you get into the water you realised not only is it perfectly clear but there are little sting rays and reef sharks just hanging out in the shallow water.I wont go into it deeply but Whitehaven is made because there if a massive whole in the ocean, it goes from like 40m to a 130m drop, this massive whole creates a whirlpool effect deep down in the ocean and as the water spins it grinds rocks to create perfect sand - like white flour in your hands and spits the sand out onto Whitehaven beach.The sharks and sting rays get tired from battling the current and so follow the sand and sit in the calm shallows of the beach to rest - and that's exactly what I was doing too.

After a while it was time to head back to the clipper for lunch before it was time for me to dive! For a mere $50 I could dive on the Great Barrier Reef, an offer I couldn't refuse lets face it.Plus I got to flash my divers licence for the first time since I got it.And so after a relaxing sit in the sun, my feet hanging over the side of the boat whilst some lovely music was played through the big speakers hanging from the mast, it was time for me to yet again don my wet suite, get my tank and weight belt and head out into the ocean for a look around.

Me and two other certified divers were in group one so we didn't have to wait around, we jumped into a the dingy and was taken to the dive site where we did a James bond style backwards role out of the boat and into the water.The dive was amazing, the coral on the Whitsundays is really well preserved considering how much of the Great Barrier Reef is dead I thought it was beautiful! All the coral was coloured purple, blue, green and orange and the fish living around it were just as impressive.My half an hour was up way to quickly and although I didn't want to get out of the water I was still happy and buzzing after such a great dive.

When we got back to the boat we found that everyone had gone to the beach to snorkel, only the divers remained, but that just meant one thing - we have the water slide all to ourselves.So we cracked open some goon and messed around jumping off of the roof of the boat, going down the water slide and topping up our tans.

A wonderful day was then followed by a crazy crazy night! It was the Clippers big party night on the Saturday and so after dinner the crew brought out the dressing up boxes and told us the games would begin shortly after we all got dressed.Obviously the only things in the fancy dress box were women's clothes and so before long the guys were dressed as girls and the girls were all dressed like rodeo clowns - mainly due to the fact the boys all took the slutty clothes and left us with Pat Butchers wardrobe.Me Steffi and her two lovely friends decided to tare, rip and reshape some clothes to make ourselves kind of look like a trailer trash family, all miss matched yet slightly gangster - saying that I obviously didn't look gangster as a boy dressed like a genie told me I looked like Simon Cowells mum! Who the hell knows what Simon Cowells mum looks like? I reckon, based on his square head alone, that he's some weird alien come to confuse people - is he annoying and arrogant? Or is he strangely attractive in an "If you even talk to me I will poke you in the eye" kind of way?Either way it's likely he is mum less so that proved the genie wrong ha! He left our conversation looking slightly weirded out, but I didn't care because I was gooned up and ready to play games!
Everyone had such a funny night that night, it began with us watching dolphins fishing around our boat! Was followed by games including creating a giant letter using 3 people in the team, 2 people stripping and dressing the 3rd member of the team in as many items of clothing as possible and a dance off and then ended with us all drunkenly lieing under the stars until we couldn't stay awake any longer.

Day 3 wasn't exactly a whole day like the brochure said but it was still great! We all got up at 6am, had breakfast and me, Steffi and the 2 girls jumped in the first boat heading to the reef for some snorkelling and because we were the first ones in the water we got to see everything.It was amazing - the site we were snorkelling is known as The Aquarium as it has the most fish per square meter in the whole of Australia.It was like swimming through a rainbow, every fish in every size and when I mean every size I mean e v e r y size.I got to see a baby nemo which was no bigger than a finger nail and without my glasses looked like a smartie with fins and on the other end of the scale I got to meet Elvis! That's right a huge fish the size of a chest of draws who is known as the Labrador of the sea and he really was, he seemed excited to see us as out of the blue he came happily swimming to great us.The crew told us we can pat him and hug him - he enjoys attention and at one point I swam behind a rock and he seemed to think it was a game of hide and seek as he came to find me! Haha.It was so much fun swimming around with a noodle keeping me boyant so I could look at the fish without worrying about staying afloat.

As soon as others started arriving me and the girl got out of the water and headed back to the boat where we decided to jump off of the roof a couple more times before it was time to go to port.At one point I was stood on the roof looking down at the water when I noticed some rather large black fist swimming around, the crew told us they were just bat fish and totally safe so the 4 of us jumped in without thinking twice.It wasn't until I came to the surface of water that I realised the crew were pulling a prank; they started throwing bread into the water which the bat fish loved and started shooting to the surface to fight for the bread.Imagine being in the open ocean and 30 fish each the size of a large dinner plate surrounding you and jumping out of the water to get food, one of the stupid black fish confused my finger for a piece of bread and bit me! It hurt as well but it was a really cool experience so I didn't mind.

We sailed to the port, the past 3 days the engine had done all the work but on the last day the wind was perfect and so the sail went up and the boat leaned as we ate hotdogs and glided back to the mainland.I sat with the girls taking in the view before me, the islands, the beaches, the sailing boats, what a wonderful 3 days of boat, beach and booze.

I can honestly say that I have never felt this way ever before, travelling is so stress free and even when your stressed it's not because of bills or pressure at work its stress over something you love so it's not that bad all.I find myself being upbeat about everything, every day I genuinely laugh and so frequently I see or do something that I hope I never forget. The Whitsundays were another one for the memory bank, another experience that I'm not sure I can do justice with words.

This week I sailed the Whitsunday Islands! Next week I'm going to Fraser Island! Woohoo!