Airlie beach (Whitsunday sailing!)

Travel to Airlie beach with Mark, where we're gonna depart on our seperate sailing trips to Whitsunday island. Airlie beach, isn't that special, though the environment is different then the preceding towns (more hills).

Hostel is pretty shit. It's cheap, but they try to sell you their over-priced crap in anyway they possibly can (make the kitchen so shit, that they hope you'll go buy their fucked up meals). Also the receptionists are a bunch of negative twats. They do have a nice rain-forresty vibe going on though :)

The sailing! The sailing was amazing! Heading there, I'm almost late for our rendez-vous (because of the aforementioned retarded receptionsists). I had no idea what kind of boat I had booked. Meet my group and see the ship, she's a beautiful 50 foot ex-racer! The captain gives us the run-down and we head out. It's good to notice how I feel at home on this boat... There's quite a breeze out and we're heading straight into it (or sailing pretty 'sharp' into it anyway), the boat leans over on one shoulder quite far and you can see some people in my group thinking "what the hell did I get myself into?!!", our captain assures them that that is what it was built for. It's a really different experience to be on a ship in shorts in the wind and still be hot! Quite pleasant I might add. I enquire as to how many knots we're doing.. we're doing 10! This is one fast ship (captain tells me she's done 25 knots when fully 'powered up' and surfing off of waves)!

We do some snorkling, which isn't amazing, but it's fun to be in the water. We of course hit up Whitsunday Island and White Haven beach... all I'll say about that is that the pictures do not do it justice and it was even better than lake MacKenzie at Fraser. I went for a swim there too and apart from the salt water in my mouth, it was pretty close to swimming in heaven.

We have a fun little group; one English girl, one scottish, a Dutch couple, a Japanese / English couple and two Canadian women. Our captain, was very much like a pirate.. telling rowdy stories at every chance he had, using rough Australian slang. Funny man, with a passion for people and the sea, think dad would've gotten along great with him :)

In the end we see a hammerhead shark just before we go snorkling, which keeps some people on the ship. Okay, so I didn't go in either... but that wasn't cuz of the shark, it was cold and the salt water makes my bum go all itchy!

I really enjoyed this trip, even though I was sad at times. I really do like sailing, for me the temperature and the extreme nature of the sailing made it better than back home. Hope my dad is proud of me :) I helped sailing where I could.