Keeping Up With Bob and Karen: Getting Ready to Sail

It's a long drive from Brisbane to Airlie Beach. I reckon it's almost 1200 km. We picked up Mary after she dismissed her grade 4s for Spring Break and started driving north towards Airlie Beach. The traffic was bumper to bumper because it was the start of two weeks with no school. Traffic finally settled down and we stopped at Childers for the night. You might recall that there was a terrible hostel fire that killed about 20 backpackers in Childers. We were in a hotel right next door to the disaster. After a beer we hit the sack. Saturday was long. We drove through a lot of bush and farmland. The farms grew sugarcane, bananas, pineapples and mangoes. We finally got to Airlie Beach late in the afternoon. We meet up with Glen and Jules, friends of Mary and Mark who are experienced sailers, who would be joining Mark, Mary, Karen and I on our catamaran for the next week. We ate out and experienced service and food at its worst. Mark arranged for us to stay in a cabin at a camp. The couch was covered in bugs that quickly got all over our gear. Poor Karen was not amused.

Sunday morning we loaded up and headed for the marina at Airlie Beach. Cumberland Boat Charters was all ready for us. We started to load our catamaran at 8:30 am. Karen and Mary hit the grocery store while we got briefed about our boat. The briefing took almost 2 hours. We finally loaded the food and then we were off for another briefing about sailing the Whitsundays. We were given a short navigation lesson and then we headed out. We were given a hands on overview of the sails, radio, washrooms and how to anchor. Finally we were off.

It was a perfect day for sailing. The wind was mostly at our backs. Up with the main sail and jib. We were excited and luckily we had Glen and Jules to help us try to get it right as sailors. After 3 hours of cruising towards Hook Island we anchored up at Stonehaven Bay. We had a lovely evening in the bay. After a short swim off the catamaran, we barbequed supper. The sunset was amazing and shortly after dark, the wind came up BIG time as a storm blew in. It thundered and rained all night.

The thunder and lightening continued in the morning. The weather settled down enough for us to move to Butterfly Bay where we hoped to snorkel. Karen sailed the boat. The ocean swells were big for us sailing rookies. We finally anchored up and waited for our opportunity to snorkel along the reef in Butterfly Bay. The showers settled down so we got our snorkel gear on. Just as we started to dive, another shower rolled in. We decided to still snorkel. It was our fist experience with snorkel gear and it was no problem. I only gulped down a few gallons of the Pacific. The coral and fish were amazing although the storm churned the water up a bit and the visibility was not perfect. All 6 of us snorkelled until the weather really wound up. Sigh.

After a showery evening and "bullets" (heavy wind gusts), we went to our berths hoping that tomorrow would be a nice weather day.

...thankfully it was!