Summertime; my new home for 3 days, and a pretty one too, if a little cosy. Our skipper was called cookie, from being a chef, Flo was the funny onboard German (you cannot escape them) and Shani might be the correct spelling for our cook’s name. Summertime was a lovely timber boat, with a Jacuzzi on the back, nice big sails that we only got to use on the last day and plenty of food. That’s right lots and lots of food. I did my best to get through all of it however even I don’t have the stomach space for 15 peoples meals.
So the 3 days went like this: head towards the islands, eat, check out Whitehaven beach, eat, sleep for a bit, eat, kayak and see turtles, eat, snorkel or dive the beautiful reef, eat, more snorkel, more eat, sleep, eat, snorkel, eat then sail back. All of this was naturally interspaced by snacks so I found it to be a lovely trip.
On the first night I fell asleep, lying on the deck, stargazing, it was peaceful and beautiful, according to Flo I snore exceedingly loud. The kayaking was awesome, I have kayaked many a time but never on such serene sea and with turtles popping up everywhere and the snorkelling was very pretty, I maxed out my camera almost instantaneously. I tried diving and typically, one of my water phobias I had forgotten and presumed dead, chose to wait until we had established I knew what I was doing in the water to then pop up and make me panic about the total ease and control at which I handled the dive. “Something must be wrong, warning, warning! He feels fine underwater, that means code red! Go go panic!” so my dive was cut short when I used up half my tank of air in about 5 seconds, a half hour dive might have been a problem. After this I just stuck to snorkelling and was fine.
Oh did I mention the food? We had wombat steaks and cakes and pies and fruit, not all made of wombat please note. Tea and biscuits pretty much whenever you weren’t in the water and then followed by the large meals, naturally always involving seconds, Shani knows how to cook, cute too, perfect woman! The crew were generally pretty awesome taking great care of us and entertaining us with their antics and funny music, showing us great times and cookie even refused to let me come back on the boat after my diving freak out, insisting I enjoy my time by snorkelling instead, which was just what I needed. Mind reader? Or maybe just sadist? On the last night we even played a game called crack racing! Where you had to transport a bottle cap from a starting line to a cup using only your buttocks. Girl’s vs. Boys, naturally the boys won, actually is that natural…?
I was sad to leave the lovely boat but also glad to be on dry land with space to walk or run if I felt the need, I stayed a couple of nights in Airlie recovering and hoping the swaying would stop then headed north once more this time to Townsville, or more accurately to magnetic island, this place was interesting.
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