Sailing the Whitsunday Islands and Great Barrier Reef

Sailing the Whitsunday Islands was pretty darn cool. The boat I was on was called the Boomerang; it's an 83 foot maxi ocean racing yacht. It has raced around the world and won first place in the world maxi series race. Aside from being 83' long, it is 20' wide with a mast xtending 100' fet above deck. It houses 26 guests and 4 crew, but that's pretty crowded.

We set sail from Airlie Beach (see the map). Our first stop was Macona Inlet which is on Hook Island. We anchored and slept there. The next day we sailed to Tongue Bay where we hiked to a lookout to view Whitehaven Beach (some travel shows call this the world's most beautiful beach). Then we hiked down for a swim, but not without our stinger suits to protect us from the box-jelly fish. These little creatures will cause an adult to stop breathing in hardly any time. If bitten, you must be immediately airflifted to a hospital and pray. After our swim, we sailed to Cateran Bay Border Island(not shown on map) for a snorkel along the Great Barrier Reef. The snorkel was amazing! I saw so many different fish (see list below) and lots of coral. It was as if you were living in another world for a little while. The amount of colors I saw on the fish and coral was more than I expected and really higlighted by the sun shining through the water. After th snorkl we sailed to Refuge Core Nara Inlet to sleep,but not without some rain on the way. No worries mates, the rain doesn't hurt. Our final stop was Raven's Core for another great snorkel and then back to Airlie Beach.

The crew let us partipate some while sailing. I was able to help pull the ropes as well as turn the grinders while raising the sails.

The fish I saw include stipred coral fish, fox faced raabit fish, red emperor, drummer, moorish idol, and tusk fish. I saw more but I wasn't able to find them all on the chart I found. The fish would swim right infront of you as if you weren't even there. You could hear them eating the coral when you got nearby.

One night after dinner on the boat, we were all on deck looking at the stars and out of nowhere came pieces of a meteor! I didn't know what it was at first; it looked like fireworks. Following it were many shooting stars. And when you looked in the water, you could see what looked like lighting bugs on top of the water. Apparently it was some type of ameboa that would light up as a defensive mechanism. If you threw some water down on them, they would light up even more.