Sea turtles

We arrived in Airlie beach with two cyclones approaching. We were unsure whether our Whitsunday's tour would still go ahead, which would be gutting as we had no time to reschedule it. Fortunately for us the cyclone passed the day before our tour and we could set sail as planned. Our boat was called 'spank me' an unusual name for what we were told was an adventure boat. As it turned out that was its name when it used to be a racing boat. It cost 18 mil to build back in the 80s so had some serious racing past.

We had a great group of 30 people that we got to know as soon as we left. We started by sailing over the to Whitsunday's, I was a masts man and had to haul to mask up with a dutch guy. It was much harder than I had anticipated and I was severely out of breath, partly due to my terrible fitness. It was a beautiful day as we arrived at the first snorkel spot. It was a nice start to the snorkelling with lots of fish as some nice corral. We moved on to find our spot for dinner

which was also where we stopped for the night. It was an inlet between 2 of the islands which was incredibly calm. We had a nice spag bog and played some drinking games into the night. I couldn't sleep in the boat as it was incredibly hot and humid and the captain snored like a fog horn. I ended up sleeping on deck under the stars which was amazing.

We were up at 6 am the next day to get to Whitehaven beach as early as possible. When we arrived there was already 5 or 6 boats there. We anchored up and spent half an hour spotting sea turtles popping up all around us. After a short walk to a view point, which was beautiful, we reached Whitehaven beach and spent a few hours there. We had to wear stinger suits, cuz of the deadly jellyfish, whenever we went in the sea. We found a little rock pool area with a swiss guy we met, where we saw loads of little sharks swimming only a few meters from

us. There were also sting rays all around us in the sea. They were hard to see so I ended up nearly standing on them a few times.

As we left Whitehaven beach I was lucky enough to see a dugong, which are rare to spot. We went to two different snorkelling points that day which were definitely the highlight of the trip. I saw about 10 sea turtles and swam next to a few of them for 5 minutes at a time. It was an incredible experience that I will never forget. There were also heaps of different fish to see, plus some nice corals. The visibility was surprisingly good, seeing as a cyclone had just passed through, and some people even spotted a few sharks.

That night we had an incredible roast beef dinner. It was the best meal I'd had on the east coast so far, and I even managed to spill all the gravel on my shorts. We played some more fun drinking games before sleeping on the deck again.

I woke up in the morning to the amazing sunrise over whitsunday island. We had breakfast and one more snorkel before going back to Airlie beach. We were told about an after party that we were all invited to, so after getting a few hours sleep and a shower we headed out to phenix club. It was a fun night and a good way to say goodbye to the group.