The 74 Whitsunday Islands were named by Captain Cook in 1770, and are the tips of underwater mountains. The islands are surrounded by fringing coral reef.

As with the rest of the East Coast, we found ourselves herded onto a trip for two days and two nights aboard the Dreamcatcher, skippered by Captain Ron, first mate Scotty and trainee first mate Jo.

We picked up our boat from Airlie Beach on the mainland, where we'd spent the day before, and set sail into grey clouds which we were told were expected to blow right by. No such luck, as we had miserable grey clouds and rain, at times torrential, for the whole trip (well, except for the last few hours on the final day of course!).

The trip basically includes two days of sailing around the Whitsunday Islands, a trip to the Whitsunday Island itself (the biggest of the 74) and Whitehaven Beach (supposedly the best beach in Australia but a bit of a disppointment we thought), snorkelling at the fringing reef and living aboard a boat for two nights. 

Living conditions were pretty grim, as we had to share the main cabin with four other people, we could only have one shower a day (at night and only using the shower to wash the soap off), and unawares to us the whole boat had been put on a diet, as there were only four bowls of food for seventeen people at each meal.  Luckily we had some really good people on the boat, so we all managed with the conditions and the trip was all good. 

We chose the Dreamcatcher as it was not a party boat, as many of the boats pack as many people onboard as possible and everyone gets drunk and hopefully laid, but the Dreamcatcher was more a relaxing cruise.  Perhaps someone forgot to tell the crew though, as the first mate had his hands all over the trainee first mate Jo (who was a girl by the way) within a few hours, even though they both had partners on the mainland.  We also heard Captain Ron tried it on with one of the passengers, and back on mainland were told by Jo that on her training they are told to try to get the Captain laid.  All a bit sordid really!

Still, the sailing was good fun except for Rich feeling sea sick for a lot of it (two of the fourteen passengers were sick), and Captain Ron even let us have a go at driving the boat (not sailing as the sails weren't up) for an hour or so.  We were really looking forward to being on a boat at night with thousands of stars above us and just the sound of the waves, but unfortunately due to the weather we only saw about six stars and the sound of the waves was drowned out by the torrential rain, but apart from that living on a boat for two days was great.  Not sure Rich's stomach could handle it for too long though.  The snorkelling was also good, but not as colourful as the Barrier Reef we soon found out.