We arrived in Airlie beach more than looking forward to our boat trip as we were talking to a lady who said that 30mph winds had been forcast for the next day when we would board our 86ft Maxi racing yacht for 3 days, chirping. The boat was called Matador and was meant to be the quickest in the Whitsundays. We got on with 33 other people and quite randomly we were sharing it with 4 other lads from Guernsey (very samll odds) that we all knew Olly Richardson, Olly Richards, Felix Mole and Henry Richardson. When boarding we had to give our alchol to be cooled and there was more goon bags than an off license, quite scary. So we headed out on the high seas and soon I was helping pull up the main sail, was pretty heavy and expensive i think he said $80000. We got a free dive included on our trip which was pretty cool but the visibilty was pretty poor but somehow we did get to see a turtle and got pretty close and now i can say i have dived the great barrier reef. After a good fun filled night we headed off to whitehaven beach which is in the top 3 beaches in the world and it was beautiful but the water was pretty dangerous with small sharks, jellyfish and stingrays coming really close and if you wanted a swim youd have to put a stinger suit on (thin wetsuit) mine had a red patch on the arse and i looked like a Baboon. Unfortunatly on the way back the sail got a tear in it and we could'nt sail so we had to use the motor on day 2. By day 3 we used the sail all the way back to the harbour after some good snorkeling were i saw a sharks and a large tuna which scared the toffee out of me. I dived down was pretty far down and low on air with bad visabilty went through this small space between two bits of coral and we were 2 metres from each other and this thing was massive about 1 metre high by 1.5m in length needless to say he turned round sharpish and i shot up. We got some real speed on the way back and i hadnt realised how far the boat tilts when its racing we were at an angle of about 50 degrees was pretty impressive. Back on land we went for pizza with a couple of sound guys from the boat and met for drinks with the others form the boat and ended up at a bar/club called Mamma Africas was pretty cool with a bit of drama as well.

We got a stupidly long bus from Airlie to Hervey bay which took just over 12 hours, ouch. We arrived at 5.30 in the morning and checked into our really impressive self catered hostel. Our 4X4 trip would start the next day. We had the briefing and unfortunatly we were not allowed to drive as you must be over 21 was a little gutting. We were happy with our group though with an Irsih couple who we were on Matador with (very funny) two Candian girls (very lovely) and two Italians (very Italian). We had to pack up our 4x4 and then headed to the barge to get the trip underway. The offraoding was brilliant but was really bumpy with there there being huge mounds of sand and roots. The first day we went to lake Mckenzie which was amazing the clearest water ive seen in a long time and was really clean had a greta time there. The first night was pretty funny with the dingo police coming and warning us about the wild dogs and taking down details of a dingo that stole some fruit gums from us. The second day we drove to a/the shipwreck, the champagne falls (dissappointing), indian head which was a good photo op on a cliff where we saw stingrays and dolphins. We also went to a certain creek which was a good laugh. The second night was a lot better were there was a lot of random mooning going on which was veyr funny at the time. The very last day we went a lake with a huge sand dune running down to it so we borrowed a body board and took it down it was very cool and made some ledges which we could jump off as you could get really high and made one into the water which was fun. We then headed back to Lake Mckenzie as we couldnt resist its charms where i randomly did a huge swim which i havnt done in a while was truely shattered after. We then unfortunatly had to get the barge back but Fraser and Whitsundays were both incedible and had the best time on them. So fun everyone should do it!