A life on the ocean waves!

Aboard the Pacific Star - destination Barrier Reef!
see all photos »

We travelled to Airlie Beach, a nice little town by a beautiful harbour, ready to embark on our 3 day sailing trip around the Whitsunday Islands the following day.

We boarded the "Pacific star" at 7:30PM and sailed to the Outer Great Barrier Reef (close to) with our 4 crew and 17 shipmates! We spent the evening gazing open mouthed at the stars and swapping travelling stories!

Bright and early we went to the reef and did our first of two dives. The visibility was a bit crap so we were quite disappointed. I was actually more impressed by looking at the reef from the boat, having tiny spinner dolphins following us as we sailed and feeding huge fish a loaf of bread from the back of the boat.

Here fishy fishy fishy!
see all photos »

In the afternoon we headed for Pearl Bay AKA the fish bowl! We sunned ourselves all afternoon (life is hard)!

Day two we spent diving and snorkelling around Pearl Bay. It was much better today. We saw loads more colourful fish and masses more coral. We also saw an aptly named 'giant clam', which was like something off a sci fi film. Spent some more time sunning ourselves and admiring the awesome surroundings.

This morning (day 3) We set sail at 5am for Whitehaven beach THE most beautiful beach in the world! (According to National Geographic Magazine!) We are not arguing with that!! We were lucky enough to be the first boat load to arrive at the beach thanks to our early start, which is quite impressive given that 5000 tourists visit the beach every week! So 19 of us smugly photographed ourselves and our surroundings until the hoardes arrived about 20 minutes later!

Its not all culture! The after boat party - very messy.
see all photos »

Then we sailed back this afternoon which took around 4-5 hours. Jim and I didn't suffer any sea sickness ourselves but a few on board did, especially on the first day. On poor guy puked for the first night and morning then got severely sun burned on the first afternoon. He spent the rest of the trip indoors lying down and not speaking to anyone with heat stroke and oozing shins yuk!

We had an amazing time and it will definately be an experience we will treasure.