Sailing, sailing away...

Hello all,

I am sitting here at one of my coordination shifts and so far its not too busy. Last weekend Lindsay and I took a long weekend to the Whitsunday Islands about 3 hours south of Townsville. After work on Friday night, we jumped in the car and drove to Airley Beach, the main port for the islands. We stayed in a little hostel (that used to be a brothel) and had a nice dinner of calamari and beer.

The next day we drove down to the marina and boarded the "Waltzing Matilda". She is a 60 foot sail boat that holds 13 passengers and 2 crew members. After a brief orientation with Fabien our captain (who, according to Lindsay, has an "awesome" French accent), we moved through the marina and out to sea.

The weather was nearly perfect. It was between 75 and 85 the entire time. The only possible complaint was the paucity of wind. After one hour of crossing the channel by motor, the engine was stopped and the sails were raised. Off we sped at between 2 and 2.5 knots. Not exactly thrilling, but it allowed for a lot of relaxation.

For the rest of the day we sailed around a few of the 75 islands in the chain. The water was the beautiful blue/green you see in postcards. Every once in a while we would hear the wild call of the Kukaburra somewhere on shore.

That afternoon we anchored the boat and took the rubber zodiac to shore where we hiked to Whitehaven Beach. It was stunning. After taking 4 gazillion pictures, we headed down to the beach for an afternoon of swimming, frisbee and stingray spotting all trying our hardests not to "pull a Steve Irwin". May he rest in peace. In the late afternoon we returned to the boat.

We picked the Waltzing Matilda mainly because there were only 11 other passengers. We met some great folks. A couple of Aussies, a couple of Brits, several Germans, and an American girl. That evening we sat on deck, drinking boxed wine and watching the sunset. Pretty nice. The food was good too.

The second and third day we cruised around a few other islands. We did some snorkeling in the mornings and afternoons (I saw another shark) and lots of sunbathing and resting. Overall this was not our typical vacation considering we really didn't do many activities other than the snorkeling. It was incredibly relaxing, which I think made Lindsay very happy. We'll post a link to our photos later on this week.

I'm now on day #2 of working 10 shifts in a row. We're now planning a trip to do some diving on our next four day weekend at the end of the month.