Leaving Townsville had us passing through the town of Bowen, before arriving in Airlie Beach and our much awaited sailing on the Whitsundays and making the photo dream a reality and stepping and swimming on Whitehaven Beach.

Bowen is quite a pretty place on the coast and a past Airforce Base for the Cattalina flying boats, we stopped for lunch and quick check on the noisy exhaust as it would appear a rough patch on Magnetic Island has made it loose again. After bush mechanics 101 repaire we headed off to check out the Giant Mango - yes another giant thing before arriving in Airlie Beach.

The drive into Airlie it is very pretty with mountaineous background with farming and cane sugar farms.

The main street is very busy and reminded us of Margaret River with lots of shops, cafes and tourist attractions.

Our caravan park is really nice and lots of locals visit everyday even getting very friendly with Mal and enjoying his company.

After a few days of enjoying the great weather a few lovely lunches, shopping and enjoying the sites we have booked our sailing venture.

Wednesday 15th at 2pm we set sail on the Silent Night our home for the next 2 nights, there are 3 crew Skipper Taylor, Deckhand Elliott and trainee deckie Jai and 12 passengers ranging from us being the oldest, to a tassie couple and the rest made up of german, belgium,dutch and canadian young ones, all with good english.

We set off sailing once out of the bay and headed for Cage Cove for a snorkel and then to Hooks Passage to enjoy the sunset and our first night on the water. The sunset was amazing and we shared the calm waters with several other boats.

Waking the next morning the waters are very calm and the view is amazing, sleep wasnt that great but we have an exciting day as we are heading off to Tongue Bay and then onto Whitehaven Beach.

We finally arrive and once on the land we head up to the inlet hill lookout and get our first taste of what to expect and it is truly amazing the whitest of white sand, the clearest of clear waters and the bluest of blue waters swirling to make incredibly beautiful patterns. It is quite breathtaking. After a short climb down the hill we arrive on the actually beach the sand is soft, cool and delicate.

We have 2.5 hours to play, walk, swim and enjoy this paradise a big tick off the bucket list, actually we are doing very well with our Aussie bucket list.

After a great lunch we continued on sailing around to another snorkelling spot before heading into Langford Sand Bar for nibbles and sunset and then berthing for the night.

Early rise the next morning after a much better nights sleep and headed for our final snorkelling which was by far the best with colourful coral, fish life, turtles and clear waters.

It was a fantastic experience sailing the Whitsundays and great memories made.

We headed back into the Marina and bid our farewells to our crew and fellow passengers arriving back to our hot shower and comfortable bed before crashing out, this sailing life is exhausting and we did play sailors as we hoisted the main sail and head sail.

After a few days of recovering and getting the exhaust replaced we headed off on the 22nd to our next site being the town of 1770.

Check out the photos

from the great outdoors

bye for now

Alida and Mal