Date: 31st July 2011

Place: Airlie Beach - Whitsundays

Weather: Sunny and windy again

We were woken up this morning by what Kev called the diesel alarm clock aka the engine. I had slept in the boys room because I was the last one to be assigned a bed so was put in a private cabin which at first sounded nice. When I looked in it I saw there was no way I was going to be sleeping in it. It was like a coffin because the door was on the roof and it was tiny. So I had to sleep between Angus and Joe and couldn't move very easily. It had been nice though because there was a big window right next to my head where we shone a torch out of into the sea and loads of fish came up.

Well we were woken by the engine in time to attempt to watch the sun rise. There was no sun rise because it was too cloudy but I did get a titanic style picture with Ben. Our first stop was Whitsunday Island where Whitehaven Beach is and Hill Inlet. It is a beautiful place and we wanted to be the first ones there so we could see it empty. We managed to do it which was awesome.

The boat dropped us off and we walked to the viewpoint to see Hill Inlet. That didn't look as nice as in the pictures but even on my camera it looks better than in real life. I think it is just a thing that looks good in pictures when you can't see all the detail. Once we had seen the view point we went down to the beach.

The first one we came across wasn't that nice so we attempted to walk around to the next one. This involved going through the sea and climbing over some rocks. Angus and Frank both managed to cut themselves really badly whilst doing this so we had to do a bit of first aid whilst there. Ben had started digging a hole so I went to help him, when we finally got it deep enough for me to stand in I went to get in it and pushed a load of the sand back down by accident. So instead I sat in it and he buried me. When I went to get out though my leg got stuck for ages and I really had to yank to get it out.

The tide had started coming in then so we had to climb over some rocks to get back. It was pretty scary, especially since I couldn't see through my hair blowing in the wind. We got back to the first beach safely and just chilled there for a while. I actually braved going in the sea with Mark and Ben but it was freezing. Because the sand on the beach is 98% Silica it means its good for exfoliating and cleaning your teeth with. So Ben put a clump of the sand in my hair.

When we got out I was freezing but soon warmed up when we started playing dead or alive. It's a ball game that you play with a group of people. One person stands at the front, chucks a ball and shouts 'dead' or 'alive' and an amount of points. If they shout dead you have to get it after it has hit the ground and then you get the points. It they shout alive you have to catch it and then you get the points. The first person to get to 500 points is then the person who throws the ball.

Being short and slow obviously didn't help me all too much in this game. I therefore came up with a technique of standing really far behind everyone so instead of running to get the balls that go far away I was right next to it already. It worked until I was running to get the ball that went even further than me and a guy who is 6ft 7 just came striding by casually and got there first.

We went back to the boat after that and sailed around again for another couple of hours, chilling out and having lunch. We then went snorkelling again in a place where Elvis lives. Elvis is a huge fish which has a bump on his head that looks like a quiff. We were swimming in there for ages because there were so many nice fish. My fear is actually slowly disappearing because I didn't panic as much when there were loads of fish around me.

Id gone off swimming the wrong way but then went back to the group of people and found that they had all found Elvis. There was another big fish with him as well which was huge. I looked at them for a little while and then decided to go back to the boat. Just as I was looking out of the water to get into the little dinghy Ben started tapping me so I looked under water and couldn't really work out why. It turned out he had seen Elvis swim right through my legs but I just hadn't noticed.

Back on the boat we sat in the room for a little while and laughed at some things in a girly magazine. We then had dinner and started playing ring of fire. I still had my drink left over from Malaysia thankfully so I could stay off the goon again for another night. We were playing that for a fair while and then went outside again and chatted. I went with Angus to join Mark who was star gazing and listening to music. It was really cool looking at the stars whilst listening to dance music, I actually fell asleep out there for a little while. Before going to bed properly I had a good look for some fish in the water again but there wasn't any in this spot. I did dream about seeing them though and in my dream Elvis had come up to that spot in the boat.