Sailing the Whitsundays

Magnetic Island was a paradise, it was so nice just to spend a few days there relaxing and enjoying the beatiful beaches (when it wasn't raining!). I stayed at a really great hostel which was more like a resort, right on the beach. I sat every morning, eating breakfast and looking out across the sea, it was heaven!

On my second day I took a bus tour of the island with a girner called Captain Daniel Daniel, who wore nothing but a torn t-shirt and a pair of very short shorts with badly placed rips and holes! He was pretty funny though and we saw lots of wildlife including rock wallabies, koalas and a huge crocodile in the back of a pub!

After my very realxing stay on Magnetic Island I set off down the coast to Airlie Beach, the gateway to the beautiful Whitsunday Islands. This is where my sailing trip of the Whitsunday Islands began. I was staying on a famous maxi racing boat called British Defender.

It was an amazing boat and so fast! I spent two days and two nights on the boat, during which I helped out with getting the sails up and even steering! When the boat was at full speed with the sails up it tipped right over on its side, the lower side of the boat would be in the water! We all had to sit on the high side of the boat to avoid going in! We were so lucky as the weather was beautiful, which made the sea and the 74 islands look stunning! We spent our days sailing and snorkelling. We snorkelled on the Great Barrier Reef which I feel so lucky to have been able to do. I saw so many different, colourful fish of all shapes and sizes and the coral was amazing. We even saw a group of dolphins swimming near the boat! On the second day, we also made a stop at an island where we went bush walking to a look out at Tongue Bay. The view was incredible, I've never seen sea that colour before, it was bright turquoise! Then we went down to the most beautiful beach I have ever seen, Whitehaven Beach. The sand was like flour, and the sea was as clear as drinking water. It was a paradise and felt like I'd walked into a film set, it just seemed to perfect too be real.

On the second night, it was a lovely clear sky with lots of stars and a full moon so we all slept on deck! It was a great end to my sailing trip! I was so disappointed to be going back to dry land, the trip was brilliant and I could have done it all over again.

The afternoon after my trip had finished, myself and a friend I'd met on the boat decided to go parasailing which was brilliant fun. I didn't realise how high you went up and it felt like nothing was holding you up. At one point the driver of the speed boat decided to dunk us in the sea so he stopped the boat so we slowly came down and hit the water.
As we did, he started up the engine again and it pulled us along through the water! Just as we started to come out away from the water he did it again, he later told us that he was just finding it hilarious hearing us scream!

Once I was well and truly back on land, I spent a final night out with the crew and the other people I was on the boat with before setting off to my next stop, Rockhampton.