Whitsundays sailing to Whitehaven and to Scuba

From my wonderful friend Shawna's recommendation, Nick and I booked a trip to the Whitsunday Islands, which is in the southern area of the Great Barrier Reef. 

(Side note: my #1 bucket list item is to scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef. This is probably because, as a child, I had a "Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?" computer game, which was both educational and awesome. In it, one of the "places" that Carmen is in is the Great Barrier Reef, and the game mentioned that the Reef may be almost gone by 2020. Ever since then I've been dying to visit the Reef before it's all gone.)

Shawna forwarded me the Mr. Travel website, through which I found the Hammer sailing trip- 2 days, 1 night aboard an old racing sailboat, with trips to Whitehaven Beach (famous for it's super soft and super while 99% silica sand) and an optional introductory scuba lesson. 

Airlie Beach, the take-off beach city for many Whitsundays sailing trips. This is technically just a bar we found for lunch one day. It was awful. 

Our boat housed 21 people and 3 crew members, all sharing two tiny bathrooms (with no shower, just a spray hose you could pull from the faucet).  Nick was easily one of the oldest people in the group (at 27), though I was more in the middle (at 25). Everyone - literally EVERYONE- on the boat was traveling Australia for at least a month, and they were flabbergasted when we told them we were only in Australia for a week. Most of our boat mates were European, with a couple having repatriated to Australia and one Canadian. 

"We're American!" we kept telling them. "We only get a couple weeks vacation!"

They looked on with pity. 

Our first day we went to Whitehaven Beach, which is only accessible by boat or by air, and had a quick hike to the view point for some photos and some history of the area. (To summarize: Colonists were major assholes. The Aborigines didn't even stand a chance.) (For more history, I super super recommend this book, which I bought in preparation for our Aussie trip: Girt: An Unauthorized History of Australia, by David Hunt. It was historical, informative, easy to read and hilarious.)
The beach sand was so soft it felt like walking through flour, and because of the silica nature of the sand, it reflected most of the heat, so it was cool to walk on.

The stinger suits were required to go into the water because jellyfish season wasn't quite over yet.

After some more sailing through picturesque islands and turquoise blue waters, we had a great chicken dinner and hung out talking with our European crewmates.

This top bunk? The 6.5 x 3.5 foot mattress? That was a "double" that Nick and I had to share. And since I was on the far side, that meant that my face was about 4 inches from the white ledge above for the entire night. Made it uncomfortable to fall asleep, though the gentle rocking of the boat resulted in a great nights sleep (for me anyway).

From the top of the boat- quickest way from our bunk to the top deck.

The next morning, after breakfast, we went for a quick snorkel at one beach and then met the scuba boat at another. It was the first time scuba diving for both Nick and I, and we were kind of nervous. But it turned out to be AWESOME.

Me, after the scuba experience: "Oh my God this is awesome! Did you see the fish?! They didn't even care that we were there! And we were so far down! And you sound like Darth Vader, the whole time!"

Nick, after the scuba experience: "Yeah, that was cool... I kind of freaked out. I thought about Wes (coworker/ friend) and how he ran out of air and didn't tell anyone and just kind of shot up to the surface, and I got nervous..."

Then we headed back to Airlie Beach, pirate flag in full swing. 

Nick brought his Kindle. I had left mine in Airlie, with most of our stuff, so I had no choice but to socialize. 

Awesome group of people. I'm super jealous of all their travels- most of them are taking a couple months off work or school to go travel and see parts of the world. I wish more Americans would do that :/