Sunday we woke up and showered in time for our 10.00am check out of Koalas hostel - it was pouring with rain and showed no signs of letting up, but we were still trying to be optimistic about our sailing trip to the Whitsunday Islands. We stored our bags, after our trek, shoe-less, in the rain, at the OZ Sailing office, then we made our way along the boardwalk towards the marina, stopping by a 'bottle shop' to pick up a box of wine ($12 for 4 litres, bargain!). We arrived at the marina (the rain decided to stop as soon as we got under cover!) and met up with the crew and paid $15 for our rental of stinger suits before boarding Freight Train, our designated vessel. We set sail and the rain soon cleared to make room for the sun, as soon as we put our sun cream on, we'd missed the brief sunny spell! After a couple of hours we arrived at Narra Inlet, where it was also pelting it down, not to be discouraged by the weather we took the tender to the shores and went on a barefoot bush walk, led by Mick the diving instructor, through the rainforest to a cave where Mick told us about the reef and some history of the Whitsundays. We then trekked further to a lookout point, through waterfalls, the forest and over rather precarious terrain. Once at the lookout we got a gorgeous view of the bay and including the rare waterfalls created by the raindfall. It was nearly dinner by this time , so we headed back (collecting the Irish boozy birds from the cave en-route) to the boat for spag boll and garlic bread. We spent the evening playing drinking games and getting to know our fellow shipmates and the crew before falling asleep to the gentle rocking of the boat.

Yesterday, we disappointingly awoke to yet more rain, but we made it to Daydream Island for a spot of snorkelling, we saw loads of beautifully coloured fish, clams and coral reefs, Sarah even touched the tail fin of, what we thought was, a barracuda. The fish responded surprisingly well to our calls of "hear fishy, fishy, fishy", through our snorkels, to pose for our underwater camera. After chicken salad lunch we headed to South Molle Island and spent the afternoon using the resort's facilities (jacuzzi, luke-warm showers, table tennis, pool table, gym and board games), before making our way back to the boat (minus the 5 Irish peeps). We thought we were being left stranded as we saw Locky (captain) and Mick speeding away in the tender, we soon found out that it was because our boat's mooring had dragged and was dangerously close to crashing into a neighbouring static boat. Once we were finally back on board we enjoyed our first roast dinner in over three months and we spent the rest of the relaxed evening drinking wine, listening to music and chatting.

This morning we woke to NO RAIN! So we headed straight back to Daydream Island, after breakfast, for some more snorkelling (visability slightly better than yesterday) and around 9.00am everyone mucked in the hoist the sails for our journey back to the mainland. We all sat on deck enjoying the rare sunshine and around 10.30am we set our feet back on dry land and said our temporary farewells and arranged to meet later for some free booze at Beaches bar. We spent the rest of the day sheltering from the rain and chilling out in front of an auzzie version of 'You've Been Framed' and Jerry Springer then headed to Beaches for a bite to eat before meeting back up with the crew and our fellow passengers to take advantage of the free booze.