Whitsunday Islands

I'm not sure how much you all know about the weather out here in Queensland at the moment but a couple of weeks ago a cyclone hit the north coast of Queensland. This resulted in a lot of flooding and people being unable to leave places north of Airlie Beach. Since then it has been raining quite a bit up here, thankfully the floods have gone though! :) Mind you it is rainy season up here so I should have expected rain - I just forgot how frustrating rain can be lol.

Anyway, back to my Whitsundays Sailing experience. I arrived in Airlie Beach at 6.10am on Monday 19th Feb to pouring rain. I then went to book into the Koalas hostel to be greeted by the rats in the kitchen. At this point I decided it was time to change hostels and so moved up to Magnums further up the road - a lot cleaner than Koalas!! Unfortunately I could not check-in until 11am here and so I had to spend the morning walking round Airlie Beach feeling all horrible and smelly after my overnight bus journey - lovely eh!?! Once you have walked the 5min walk down the main street of Airlie Beach there is not much to see of do here other than go to the Lagoon. The sea is not safe to swim in this far north due to the stingers. I went for a walk to the Lagoon but it wasn't really the weather for swimming although I am sure it would be lovely on a nice warm day!

Anyway having got over my depression of the rain and horrible hostels, on Tuesday morning I headed off to find my home for the next 2 days, The Condor sailing boat:

The Condor has won a number of races, such highlights as the Sydney to Hobart, Fastnet, Bermuda Cup, World Maxi Championship, Porto Cervo Maxi Series and Antigua Race Week just to name a few. Condor is 81’6” in length, was designed by Ron Holland and built in Penryn, Cornwall in the United Kingdom.

On my way to the boat I bumped into a number of my Fraser Island group who informed me that the weather had been rubbish for them. Thankfully this was not the case for our trip! :) I think I was lucky! I am glad that I was not able to get the date I had originally wanted (Saturday 17 Feb) as they were delayed a day in leaving due to the weather.

By 1pm I had met a number of my sailing crew and we were on board the lovely Condor. We left the harbour and the sails were put up. When this boat was being raced it required 24 crew.We had 3 crew plus the 25 of us and so we were all to help with the sailing tasks. It rained slightly that afternoon but this just made the sailing more fun. As we were sailing the boat leans on it's side.

While this was the case we all had to sit on the high side with our legs over the edge - the closer to the front the wetter you got from the waves. :)

That afternoon we stopped at Hayman Island and I went snorkeling for the first time. We had to wear lovely sexy stinger suits - at least mine matched the colour of my towel!:

The snorkeling was great fun, I saw lots of colourful fish but I did not manage to find Nemo. :( After snorkeling we headed to round to Nara Inlet where we anchored up for the night. That evening we got a lovely meal from our chef Glen:

There was a clear sky that night and the stars were amazing - even better than when I was in the outback!! Our skipper Ash was great at pointing out constellations.

Thankfully it stayed a clear night except for the few showers early in the morning. The next morning we got up bright and early and sailed round to Whitehaven Beach. Again the weather was kind to us while sailing round and I got the chance to steer the boat - great fun. We got dropped off and walked up to the lookout point to see Whitehaven Beach. Here are some pictures on a clear day:

And here is what it looked like when we were there:

Not quite the same but still lovely. We then headed down to the beach for awhile but it was cut short by an hour due to the heavens deciding to soak us all again. So we ran back to where we were getting picked up and had an early lunch on the boat.

That afternoon we had an amazing sailing experience. It was pouring with rain and to be honest when I looked in front of us I thought I was back home as all I could see was mist and rain! But the wind got up (and the rain got heavy) and the Condor was flying!! We were even surfing the waves at times! It was great to see the Condor going so fast and this was without us trying to sail fast!! I would love to have seen the boat in action back in it's day. No wonder it won so many races. Our next stop was Luncheon Bay where we stopped for some snorkeling again. Although it was raining this was better than the first day as the colours of the coral were lovely and it was a lot clearer. When sailing round to Stonehaven where we anchored for the night, we saw a lovely sunset:

Glen cooked us a brilliant steak on the BBQ that evening and then everyone stayed up drinking and chatting. The weather was not so great that night and so everyone slept downstairs rather than some sleeping on deck like the previous night. The next morning we sailed back to Airlie Beach and arrived back about 10.30am. The sail back on the Thursday morning was lovely. The sun was out and I managed to top my tan up a bit. It has got a bit pale the last couple of weeks due to the lack of sun I have seen! Below is a picture to show where we sailed:

The trip was an amazing experience and was a great laugh. The people on out boat were fantastic and good fun. Thanks everyone!

xx