Whitsunday Sailing Trip

After the strong cyclone Debbie and all the destruction it brought, which almost literally put a damper on our sailing trip, we were finally able to embark on the 2-day tour. For us, the sailing tour was once again a premiere on our world tour, as neither of us had ever spent a night on a sailboat :-)

So we are very excited to move into our new home on the sailboat Matador together with 25 other guests and the 3-person crew. Surprisingly, we even had more space than we expected, so we just had to wait and see how much the sea would give us trouble.

The first hours of the tour were characterized by first sailing experiences, a brief safety briefing, and getting to know the other guests, two of whom were from Dunningen and one from Schwenningen ;-) - how small the world can be sometimes :-D

After lunch on the boat, the absolute highlight of the tour was supposed to take place with a visit to Whitehaven Beach. Just as we left the Matador, we saw a sea turtle coming to the surface to breathe. Once on land, we first visited the viewpoint, which offers a great view of the incredibly fascinating and unique sandy beach. By the way, the sand here is so fine that it squeaks under your feet when you walk. Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate very well that day and we already saw that the next heavy rain shower was waiting for us. At least the weather was still decent at the viewpoint.

At Whitehaven Beach, Tobi immediately went in search of stingrays and quickly found them. However, the weather suddenly changed and it started pouring rain, so we headed back to the sailboat earlier than expected. After all the passengers had freed themselves from the stinger suits (full-body wetsuits that prevent you from being stung by dangerous, poisonous jellyfish), we sailed to a quieter bay for our overnight stay. Dinner was served here, and we were entertained by the amazing crew. The sunset on a sailboat was also a unique experience that we had never had before.

The next morning we were woken up pretty early when the journey continued at 6:00. The night with 30 people on board was surprisingly quiet and we slept pretty well. By 7:00 in the morning, we were already at the first of the 3 planned snorkeling spots in the heart of the Great Barrier Reef in the Whitsunday National Park. More than 2 weeks had passed since the storm, but we unfortunately had to realize that a large part of the coral reef had been destroyed. The visibility was already a bit better and the first large fish had returned, which we could still feed with toast from the boat. However, the damage to the reef will probably only be repaired in decades.

The reef was still in better condition at the second snorkeling spot, as it was in a protected bay, but the visibility was still quite impaired, which did not change at the third spot.

Afterwards, we only had to return to Airlie Beach and we were quite happy to have solid ground under our feet again and to be able to protect ourselves better from the countless rain showers. We had once again booked the tour through Bookme with a 50% discount and would recommend it to any traveler.

The next day, we wanted to leave Airlie Beach and the bad weather behind and headed north again. We made stops in Mission Beach, the Tablelands around Cairns, Port Douglas, and Cairns itself, but none of them convinced us and no major activities were planned. From Port Douglas, we had the opportunity to go snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef again, but since we had already experienced this under dream conditions in the Lady Musgrave Lagoon, we decided against it. Additionally, we could have visited the Daintree Rainforest, but since we had already seen a lot of rainforest in New Zealand and Australia, we also decided against it. Instead, we used the time to organize things again ;-) especially in view of the upcoming mammoth program of 3 flights in 5 days. With a heavy heart, we also had to part with some camping equipment that we had left behind "for free" at our last campsite in Cairns, where we felt very comfortable.