Australia: Whitsundays

Views over the Airlie Bay, not the same day as I arrived

So I take the night bus from Noosa to Airlie Beach, leaving Noosa at 6 pm and arriving at Airlie at 10 am the next day, so quite a long ride…
And just to make things better, as I arrive at Airlie it starts raining, and raining hard. So by the time I get to the hostel I’m completely soaked, and I can’t check in until 1 pm, which just tops it.

To kill some time I head to the agency that organizes the sailing trip that I have planned for the next 2 days, to check in and ask about what I need to bring and where I need to be.

Before heading back to the hostel I decide to spend some time in a café, indoors, with a hot coffee (and because I still can't check in). When the rain seems to diminish I head back to the hostel to check in and take a hot shower. I make some lunch and start preparing my luggage for the trip.

I spend the rest of the afternoon reading in the common area of the hostel, hiding from the rain.

S.V Whitehaven

The next morning I get all my stuff, drop my backpack off at a storage and head towards the sailing boat: The SV Whitehaven, the weather doesn't seem to be great this morning either, but you have to keep a positive mind set. At the meeting point we get introduced to one of the crew members as well as the rest of the group and head towards the boat.

The boat is an old boat, from 1982, completely made out of steel, with a weight of 34 tons and a max speed of 15 knots. We have 3 crew members, and 24 guests. The boat looks big enough to easily hold that amount of people, and as we get shown where we are sleeping I see that I wasn't too far off, I had a decent sized bed, if you keep in mind that it’s a sailing boat.

Once back upstairs we get a quick safety briefing, and they explain what itinerary we are going to follow: The first day will be all about water activities, kayaking, snorkelling and more snorkelling. So for these we are heading to the northern part of the islands.

First snorkelling spot

When we arrive at the first snorkelling and kayaking spot we have a nice lunch and then get in the water. I decide to go kayaking first, to get that over with, and then snorkel for the rest of the available time. When I get in the water to snorkel it starts raining again. Not that I'm complaining about it, the fish seemed way more active because of the rain, but it did take away some visibility, which was a bit of a shame. 

As more and more boats arrive at our snorkelling spot the captain decides to head to a different spot. A bit more south, thus, a bit closer to the place where we will be anchoring for the night. The bad hing about this is that the rain had only increased on our way, so the new spot had a whole layer of dirty rain water that came down from the nearby island, and this didn't help the visibility.

After the last snorkel we get some pastries to recover some energy and we head down to Hook bay, a quiet bay between Hook island and Whitsunday island  where we will be anchoring for the night. As the crew starts to prepare dinner, everyone left upstairs just starts talking and getting to know each other.

Early morning and the jumping ship

For dinner we get green curry, allegedly the best green curry served on all the ships, because it seems to be tradition to serve green curry on all the sailing trips of the Whitsundays. After dinner the mood falls quickly, the weather is at it's worst and no one seems to be in the mood to do to much, so we just head to bed and get ready for the next day, which will be an early one!



So the next morning I get woken by the sound of the engine and by the enormous waves hitting the boat at about, at one point so high that I was just bumping around in my bed.It's about 6:30 am and I decide to head to the desk, there I notice that I was the last one to wake up. But look around, not everyone seems to feel to good with these big waves.

Whitsunday Island

After a sightly rough trip we arrive at a little bay, Chance bay, which is the gate away to the Whitehaven beach. We have a nice breakfast and then make our way over the island to one of the worlds most beautiful beaches.
On our way there and from the viewing points we don't really have the best weather. But once we make our way down, the sun starts shining and makes for a wonderful beach day.
We were supposed to have about 3 hours at the beach, but after about an hour and a half, the crew member that had joined us at the beach calls us all together and tells us that we have to get back to the ship: There have been some issues back on the ship, so we need to start making our way back.

Back on the ship the captain tells us about what happend: The hydraulic steering had a little hole in the pump, so there was no way to steer from up the main desk, the only way was to have a man down there manually moving the rudder. This ment that we were going back by motor, as sailing could have to much of an impact on the course.
Everything goes smooth anyway, but it takes us about 6 hours to get back, instead of the planned 3.

Back at the port, on my way to my luggage storage, I see a few girls of the Norwegian group of Fraser Island, so I decide to join them later for a couple of drinks, before getting the bus to Cairns.