Day 103, 104, 105, 106, 107 - Airlie Beach and Whitsunday sailing - Friday 27th, Saturday 28th, Sunday 29th, Monday 30th, Tuesday 31st January 2012

We arrived into Airlie beach at 8am, an hour later than expected, and literally ran to standby travel for check-in; we were running late as some of the roads along the way were closed due to flooding from the heavy rain! So not only were we tired, smelly and irritable, we were now loaded up with all our backpacks and running down the high street! The night before we had bought some booze for the trip, I had some bottles of XXXX and Soph had 2 litres of red wine (they call it goon here if its wine in a bag - I'll come back to that!). The problem was that when we arrived at the travel place to get our boat tickets, we were politely told us no glass, as if it breaks it's a nightmare, and no red wine as it stains the boat deck! Great, so everything we had bought wasn't allowed. We headed straight over to the boat jetty, I left Soph there and waited outside the bottle shop at 8.55am to get cans of beer instead of bottles and some canned vodka lemonade for Soph. The lady must of thought I was a full blown alcoholic when she arrived at the shop; I stood before her covered in sweat, stinking and in a rush to buy cheap booze at 9am on a Friday morning!! On my way back Soph had met up again with the 3 Irish girls we met on the castaway island (suddenly I thought we need more booze as those Irish love a drink!!). The girls are a right laugh and they are on the Apollo boat with us so we were really pleased. We boarded the boat at about 9.30am and met the crew, Cam - Captain, Jason - Deck-hand, Eugene - cook, Tiffany - Dive instructor and Alex - Host / other dive instructor. They were going to sail 25 of us around the Whitsunday Islands for the next 3 days. Out of the 25 of us, most were English and German with a dash of Swedish, French and Irish.

On Boxing Day every year in Australia there is a boat race from Sydney to Hobart (Tasmania's capital), we went to see it when we were in Sydney Boxing day, and the boat we were on has won this prestigious race twice, come second once and third once as well. When we booked the trip I imagined a luxurious boat but in reality it was a sailing boat so it spared no room for creature comforts as it was built for speed!!

After about 2 hours on the boat we arrived at our first destination - Langford reef, this place was beautiful and reminded us both of the beaches in the Maldives. We were just basically on a huge sand dune in the middle of warm shallow waters just off the main land. Soph and I then went scuba diving with Becky and the Diving instructor Tiff, the visibility was ok but not brilliant as there had been a lot of bad weather a few nights before. We did however see loads of fish and the coral was excellent. Then we spotted a turtle swimming about 5 metres from us, Soph had her waterproof camera so we got a few pics!

After the scuba diving we snorkelled for a bit and then headed back to the boat for some chicken salad for lunch. The late afternoon was spent chilling and chatting on the boat until dinner; we had beef stroganoff and then quite a few beers before bed. However, sleeping on the boat proved to be a bit of a nightmare; because the water is a constant 28 degrees and the boats sleeping compartments are around the kitchen and engine, it is so incredibly HOT - plus there is not an air conditioner in sight!! So we tried in vain to sleep downstairs but after about an hour we took our pillows and sheet up to the deck to see if we could sleep up there, the problem was everyone else had the same idea - it was very crowded, but still a laugh and sleeping under the star light was pretty amazing.

We awoke on deck at 5am to the sight of the calm ocean and a beautiful light coming over the Whitsunday Island. The benefit to sleeping on the deck was waking up early and having the whole deck to ourselves to take in the early morning light - it made the sleepless night seem like miles away and made it especially amazing as 30 mins after waking we saw somw dolphins playing just off the boat! The rest of the boat had obviously got up in the middle of the night and gone back below deck to sleep and so they started to stir around 6.30am and by 7am we were all munching on muesli and drinking coffee as we hang our legs over the side of the boat. First stop today was the famous Whitehaven beach - this is a 7 km white sand beach with crystal clear blue water and is apparently voted in the top 3 beaches in the world! It has the same sand as Lake McKenzie in Fraser Island - 98% silica. We anchored up and got in the little boat to take us ashore - it was only 9am and already really hot. It seems wrong to moan about it being too hot especially because we were lucky it wasn't raining (it had rained every day for the past 7 before we'd arrived!) but after being in the sun on the boat all of the day before, literally everyone headed straight for the shady area of the beach. After a while we all decided to do the bush walk and on the way saw a snake eating a lizard and then a massive lace monitor lizard climbing a tree - he was well over 3 foot and very wide.

We were picked up again a couple of hours later and as we got back on the jump and prepared to put the sails up for some proper sailing, a storm hit us and covered the boat in torrential rain. Everyone cowered under deck for 10 minutes before it cleared up and the blue sky returned; then it was time to get the sails up and do some sailing. It was surprisingly fast with the sails up and also the boat tilted incredibly sideways - you daren't get up in case you fell overboard!

Next up was lunch of pasta and salad followed up a quick dash over to Hook Island for some more snorkelling. Ad decided he didn't fancy getting in the water and so off I went on my own to explore the underworld of the Whitsundays and was pleasantly surprised of the clarity of the water and the numerous fish and corals.

Back on boat and whilst waiting for our dinner, we snacked on crisps and dips whilst playing games. Ad and Jason, the deck hand, wrists were tied together as well as 2 of the other girls and they had to work out how to get out of it without taking the rope off their hands. It was hilarious to watch Ad twisting around Jason and putting his bum in his face! So funny in fact that I was so busy laughing that I fell into one of the winches and bruised and bloodied my leg - probably served me right! It took all of them quite some time, and a few hints, to get out of it and the boys were gutted as the girls escaped first! With the warm act done the next game was the cardboard box game - basically you have to rip off part of the cardboard box with your mouth without touching the floor, however, its gotta to be said that the cardboard box game is a lot harder to do on a slippery deck! That said, Adam, aka Mr flexible, came joint winner with 1 of the Swedish guys who did a very strange frog move to get to the cardboard box! We then settled down for our dinner of steak and mash and chatted with everyone into the wee hours before settling down for another sleep up on deck.

During the night a little storm came overhead - this meant that we got a bit wet as we were sleeping on deck. The pro of this was that everyone, sensibly, else went back downstairs so we had the whole deck to ourselves and woke up to a lovely morning; the con was that we spent a lot of the night in wet bed sheets!

Today was the last day so the plan was to do a bit more snorkelling before heading back to Airlie beach in the late afternoon. So after some breakfast we sailed over to the next reef location - once in were in the water we realised that this was the best snorkelling spot so far. The coral, fish and colours were amazing! We saw lots of fish, all of which I do not know the names of, however I did see nemo and his blue friend hanging around a bit of orange coral - very cool. I literally had to drag myself out of the water when Jason came to pick us up on the little boat.

Back on boat we had some lunch and then hopped off the boat again to explore a nearby little island. The sand was so hot it was actually impossible to walk and explore anything so Ad, the Irish girls and I just sat under a shady spot and took in the view of sky blue seas, white sandy beaches and blue sky!

Come afternoon it was time to start our sail back to Airlie beach; I think we were all keen to get off and have a shower and wash our clothes but at the same time were really sad our Whitsunday experience was coming to an end. On the trip back the skipper, Cam, stopped the boat and we all had a quick jump in the ocean without our stinger suits. It was really refreshing to jump in without a wetsuit on but as soon as we were in we were back out again as everyone was worried about jellyfish. Its singer season and the box jelly fish will kill you so as much as everyone loved jumping in, you could instantly see the worry etched on their faces when they resurfaced!

We arrived back at the marina and trekked in the searing heat to our hostel with our bags. I swear, showers after not washing properly are the best thing in the world!

In the evening a reunion was happening at the local bar with everyone from the boat - Ad and I planned to pop along for a drink but come 8pm so were in bed asleep! God we're getting old……

God it felt good to sleep in a bed in an air con room! After a lazy morning we headed down to the Airlie beach lagoon - again, you're not allowed to swim in the sea due to the stingers; this means that the lagoon basically serves as the beach. After lying in the sun for a bit we prepared to jump into the lagoon to cool off and refresh but much to our surprise it was like a hot bath!! We larked around, read our books and chilled in the bath, sorry lagoon pool for the rest of the day. In the evening Ad cooked up a storm in the hostel kitchen and then we headed to our lovely cold room to watch a film.

We awoke to the pitter patta of rain - we were so lucky to have had pure sunshine on our Whitsunday trip! We checked out of the hostel and with the day to kill (our bus wasn't until 8pm that night), we read our books and chatted by the side of the pool.

Come 7.30pm we made our way down to the bus station only to be met by the Irish girls! They were meant to be leaving the day before but had extended their stay. We chatted with them and nicked their pizza until the bus turned up.

On the bus we attempted (and failed) to get some sleep ready for our 4am arrival in Mission Beach.