Whitsundays

Incredible - 2 days sailing in the Whitsundays. The boat was Waltzing Matilda - a 65 foot Bruce Roberts design - really spacious and we had the suite at the aft 14 customers and 2 crew on board - looked like brothers. Unfortunately hardly any wind but we did have clear blue skies. In the morning we saw hump back whales (a mum and her calf), in the afternoon we were at Whitehaven Beach seeing turtles, in the sunset we had dolphins swimming with the boat. Then we had sunset - a fantastic sight as at the same time as the sun was setting we had a new moon and Jupiter was visible just below the moon. Never before have we seen such a clear night sky - there were shooting stars, the milky way and just after 9.30 Venus came into view. Despite it being winter the evening never chilled.

When we were swimming we had to wear attractive and sting suits - tele-tubbies eat your heart out.

The wildlife was far too quick for us to get photos but the memories will last for ever.

The following morning we were up early - after a full breakfast we were into our first snorkle site of the day never been sea swimming at 8.30am before - there is a hump backed wrasse which is 1.2m long called Priscilla (Elvis who was 1.6m died last year after too much human contact. The rest of the fish seemed so small but nevertheless they were colourful, as was the reef. There was some hunter fish rounding up the smaller fish - all the small fish jumped out of the water en masse at the moment of attack.

Joe and George got cold so went back to the boat early. Mark managed to get a smalll jelly fish sting on his foot - the only part of the body that is exposed with the sexy suits!

The second snorkle site was Langford Reef - an island reef famed for turtle feeding - not so lucky this time in spotting turtles but some fantastic reef to see - particularly a bright purple reef with fish to match. Amazing that swimming in 50ft+ of water does not bother you but we worry about being out of depth in pools!

After a quick lunch we were on our way home - but not before a quick swim of the boat in the middle of the sea (where we had seen whales the day before). The wind then came in so Mark was able to leave the boat in the tender to take some photos of the Waltzing Matilda under full sail.