Last Friday we went sailing around the Whitsunday Islands for 2days, 2nights. Our boat, Boomerang, was an 83FT Maxi ocean racing yacht that had alot of success in racing all over the world.
We set off about lunchtime, the weather was looking good, it had been raining everday for the past week, bit windy but that was good for sailing. When we got out of the marina we had to help raise the sails, it was hard work. Once they were up you could see why it had won so many races, we were flying. We all had to sit along one side, the other side was pretty much under water. The boat was leaning over so much it felt like it was going to tip over. We cruzed past daydream island and over to Hook Island where we dropped anchor, cracked open a beer and got to know everyone. There were 28 of us on board and 3 crew members. We had a good mix of nationalities too, people from Germany, Holland, Swizerland, Norway, Canada & ofcourse England. We partied on the deck as the sun went down, had some dinner and partied some more.
We were rudely awakended at 6am by the clatter if pots & pans as the crew prepared lunch. We had breakfast and we were off sailing again. We stopped at Tongue bay on Whitsunday Island. We went ashore and walked up to a nice spot over looking Whitehaven beach. We had about 3hrs on the beach, sunbathing & playing football. It was the whitest sand we had ever seen & supposevely the whitest in the world.
When we got back on board, we had lunch & we were off again. As we were sailing past a big cliff face the captain done a loud whistle, every few seconds he'd whistle, then 2 massive sea eagles came down and flew next to the boat, he threw up a sausage and one of the eagles caught it. A girl threw the other sausage so the other bird went hungry , she fed the fish instead.
We anchored up in a little bay for some snorkelling but we had booked a scuba dive so we went over to the dive boat for our briefing, turned out that Rox wasnt allowed to do it coz she has asthma, she was gutted and still is. It was the coolest thing ever, (sorry Rox, but it was) We went down 10M and was under for 30 min, the water was abit cloudy so it wasnt as good as it could have been but it was an incredible feeling. We sailed around the corner to a deserted island, i got to drive the boat, again, think i was the captains favourite as we would constantly be swapping fishing stories. We all went ashore and had cheese & crackers and watched the sunset. We got back on the boat and started boozing while we sailed to another bay to spend the night. The stars were amazing out at sea, you could just lay back and watch them for hours.
Bedtime wasnt that great tho, we were all crammed in on bunkbeds, we had the top bunk, with a 2" matress. When laying in bed, the ceiling was 1ft away from your face.
Again, rudely awakened, by dance music this time, had breakfast, brushed teeth and we sailed to another spot for some morning snorkelling followed by back flips & dives off the boat.
On the way back to the marina the captain gave us a history lesson about when Captain Cook found the islands and the aboriginal people lived there at the time and about the barrier reef & marine life, very edumactional.
That evenning we all met up at the pub for dinner & drinks then we went back to one of the hostels to play some crazy drinking games and thats as far as we remember.....