The night before our cruise started six of us gathered from various points in Australia: I flew up from Brisbane, Josh and Jill drove up from their farm stay near Rockhampton and Simon, Pam and Maria drove down from Cairns. We had a decent dinner (I had roo) for our last night on dry land and all turned in fairly early in our new home, the 41 foot Interlude.

None of us slept very well that first night in our new surroundings, so we were up early the next day to prepare for our morning briefing and subsequent departure. Craig, a typical Queenslander who looked like he'd been in the sun too long gave us a comprehensive overview of our sailing grounds and our vessel. By around noon we were about ready to depart, so we split up to purchase a few last minute items (such as another case of beer), sign the bond deposit on the boat, grab snorkelling gear and argue with car rental places.

After all that faffing we were a little late getting underway, but Craig got us moving out of Abel Point Marina (Interlude's home) and into Pioneer Bay. He took us through an anchoring exercise (dropping and weighing), watched us raise the mainsail and unfurl the headsail and had Josh take us through a tack. Once he was confident in those basic skills he jumped in the extra dinghy we were towing and sped off home, leaving us to find our way to the trip's first anchorage: Nara Inlet.

The terms of our charter required that we be safely anchored in an area protected from wind and waves (the Whitsundays are full of such havens) by 4PM each day. We were allowed to set sail again at 8AM the following morning - so no night sailing for us!

We were all still soaking in the fun of being on the boat and the novelty of other vessels passing us, such as the Solway Lass, above (Solway Pass is one of the more dangerous straits in the Whitsundays). Amazingly, Simon caught two mackerel on this first day with our rinky handlines which I thought would never turn up any fish. The first, a corsetted frigate mackerel, was big enough to keep and have for dinner that night. The second, a beautiful looking spotted mackerel (left) was too small and had to go back.

Because we had departed fairly late we were slightly behind schedule, and had a few hours of open sailing to get to Nara Inlet. We were safely anchored by around 4:30, and decided to explore our surroundings a bit before sunset.

The water was pretty bloody cold, so Pam, Simon and I each had only a quick dip before climbing back out again. The weather throughout the trip was gorgeous - sunny and in the 20s, but not exactly hot summer weather that makes you desperate for a swim. We were certainly glad to have wetsuits to keep us warm when snorkelling.

The "attraction" at Nara is some aboriginal cave paintings (evidently they like waffles [right]) on shore, so we decided to hustle in and check them out before the sun went down. I had a little bit of trouble getting our dinghy going, as evidenced by the next few shots where I'm slowly drifting further and further from Interlude. I did eventually get her started though, and we were off for our exploration.

Heading into the shore we experienced our first difficulty navigating the fringing reefs of the islands in the dinghy. My plan was to blast us towards shore until the last minute, then heave the outboard up out of the way so we could glide smoothly to the beach. Unfortunately the coral was so close to the surface that upon doing same the dinghy swiftly grounded its aluminium bottom on the reef. Josh had spotted the problem and tried to intervene by having me throw the prop in reverse in time, but in accordance with my brilliant plan it was already out of the water.

We fended off with the paddles and eventually a few of us got out into the shallow water, which both lightened the boat and allowed us to tow it in. Coming back out, Jill and I fended more diligently to avoid destroying more coral. Once again in deep water, I dropped the outboard back in, though Maria doesn't look too pleased with the performance.

Once safely back aboard Interlude, we cracked open a few beers (which would quickly become a late afternoon tradition) and Simon cleaned "Barbie", who was to become half our dinner. For a fairly reasonable fee the charter company stocks the boat with all the food you'll need for the trip. They must've assumed we were very fat, though, because although only one morning was slated to have a bacon and eggs breakfast, they provided us 30 eggs, or 5 per person! We quickly found ourselves oversupplied with some things (like dinner meats and the two whole chickens which were supposedly only one lunch's worth) and severely undersupplied with other things (like snacky foods, which we burned through in our first couple of days). For the remainder of the trip we wanted to hail all visible craft on the radio and offer to trade them some pork loins for a bag of Doritos.

Our first full day of sailing didn't start well. When Josh started the engine it kept setting off the alarm that it wasn't properly charging the batteries. Craig had mentioned it was finicky in the briefing and suggested we just give it a few tries. After many tries and a lot of cursing of shitty French electronics (the boat is made by Beneteau) Josh and Simon decided to pull off the various panels inside to take a look at the engine, alternator and batteries. Simon actually brought a multimeter with him, so we did a bit of probing and discovered a very slow (one small drip per ten seconds) diesel leak just above the alternator. All the while we had been in contact (via cell phone to avoid letting every boat hear our problems on the radio) with the charter company and they finally came up with the solution to getting the battery to charge. Evidently the French had installed a "clever" switch that cuts off the charging circuit if it doesn't detect a charge within some ridiculously short period of time after starting the engine. The solution, therefore, was to rev the engine to about 3500 RPM immediately upon starting, in order to convince it that it really was charging the battery. By now, however, we had reported the fuel leak (which both Josh and Simon said they'd ignore if it were their engine) so we had to wait 1.5 hours for a repair boat to come with the appropriate washer (the leak was around a bolthead). So at 9:30 we sat on the deck and had a couple of beers while we waited.

The fix took approximately 12 seconds (of course) and then we were underway. Luckily we had planned a short sail that day to Butterfly Bay (above) which supposedly had good snorkeling. It turned out to be pretty mediocre, and after Josh and I saw a few jellyfish (which, by the way, looked nothing like the three species of really nasty jellyfish in the area) we boogied out of there quick.

Day 3 promised to be a bit more exciting from a sailing perspective, as we were rounding the outside of Hook Island (to the most exposed waters of our cruise) and sailing down towards the famous Whitehaven Beach. The morning sail ended up being in 25 knot winds and 2 meter swell, both higher than forecast. Morning showers (belied by the blue sky above) and heavy spray forced the crew into wet weather gear (and fruity poses).

Nobody escaped that morning without a little seasickness. Jill was probably worst off, but we were all looking a little green. Simon and I surreptitiously got a bucket out from one of the lockers, but we managed to make it without needing it. We stopped for a picnic lunch on one of the smaller islands (everyone was glad for an hour ashore) and in the afternoon continued our sail to Whitehaven.

Whitehaven was awesome. Beautiful, squeaky white sand, eucalypts and the occasional palm fringing the shore and crystal clear water. It was made even more amazing because of its remoteness. A huge, ugly ferry of tourists was there when we arrived, but they left almost right away, and the beach belonged only to people who had arrived by yacht or seaplane. We lounged and swam for a while, had a few beers (noticing a pattern?) and then explored along the shore. Most of the beach was pristine, except for a roughly 20 meter square which was completely chewed up by foot traffic. Evidently the ferry (which got its clientele to shore by packing them like sardines into what strongly resembled D-Day landing craft) doesn't allow the passengers to wander far.

Josh dinghied back to the boat to double check that fires were, indeed, not allowed on the beach (they weren't) and pulled a pretty hilarious stunt when he tried to James Bond roll out of the dinghy onto the beach but misjudged the water depth by about a meter and a half and plunged straight in, right in front of me and Simon (who nearly had MI's laughing).

This was followed by XX vs XY beach Pictionary (drawing in the sand with your foot) where nearly every clue was an inside joke from earlier in the trip (such as the "poo line" which you could see streaming out behind the boat every time the holding tank was discharged).

We headed back to Interlude around sunset, and Josh and Simon had some fun on the dinghy (below).

One cool thing about the series of sunset-beer photos Josh took below is that if you look at the sailboat in the background (left side, behind Simon's shoulder) you can see that it's slowly motoring by as it moves progressively farther left in each frame.

That evening was probably our liveliest, as after dinner we moved out to the rear deck and played a fairly entertaining game of Aussie vs. American charades. Jill, Josh and I also sang "The Star Spangled Banner" (and predictably fucked up the words - Amrys would be ashamed) which is much more stirring than "Advance Australia Fair", although Pam and Maria did a fine rendition of same.

I just realised that our liveliest night consisted of charades and national anthems. Wow.

Prior to the trip we provisioned ourselves with a goodly amount of beer, one Cask of Wine (CoW - what the Aussies call a 2 liter BoW) per night and a bottle of rum (in case we wanted grog). The CoW was a good amount of wine for dinner each night, but we broke into a few other bottles that Simon and Pam had brought during the post-dinner fun. While a good time was had by all, I also spilled a glass of red wine on both the port and starboard sides of the vessel, and foolishly did not wipe it up right away.

This led to the realisation the following morning that both the gel-coating of the deck and the vinyl of the canopy had huge purple stains on them. This spelled trouble since ordinary kitchen cleaner wouldn't budge them and we'd owe about $1500 if the charter company had to strip the gel coat to get it off.

We decided to swing by the only town in the islands the next day in order to get: beer, Doritos and some heavy duty boat cleaning chemicals. The sailing was a lot easier and Pam had a go at the helm (above).

Once arriving at Hamilton Island, most of the crew went ashore while I stayed on the boat on anchor-watch (we were a little sceptical of our job setting it this time around). I watched 737s land on the island airstrip which looked entirely too small for them and seaplanes land on the water nearby. Josh and Pam came back for me and the garbage we had accumulated thus far. The anchor was holding, so all of us got to go back to the island for our first real showers in several days and for a walk around the tiny town.

We bought our needed supplies, including oxalic acid to clean the boat (Yum!) and a newspaper to fill us in on the fact that we couldn't bring toothpase on airplanes any more. After leaving Hamilton we took the opportunity of some (relatively) calm water to deploy me in the dinghy to take photos of the Interlude under way. This was really a lot of fun, to try to steer the dinghy around, bouncing over the sailboat's wake and simultaneously take snapshots.

Interlude was pretty much on a run at this point and Josh was insistent that we get some pictures of it gull winged, where one sail is off one side of the boat, and the other off the opposite side. We did eventually succeeed, and these turned out to be some of my favourite pictures of the trip.

We had a fairly leisurely sail (although for a while I was on boat-pole duty, keeping the mainsail from any unexpected jibes while on the run [above left]) to our evening destination, Cid Harbour, which was supposedly a refuge for turtles and sea eagles.

I'm pictured at left setting the anchor, something I did many times over the course of the trip. Because the anchor winch allowed the chain to slip we attached a rope (called a 'snubber') to the chain before setting the anchor so that the rope takes the strain instead of the winch. Unfortunately our snubber was in rough shape and we snapped it while setting the anchor one evening. Subsequent anchorings required us to jury-rig a dock line, which made the process a little more time consuming. What trip is complete without a little engineering improvisation?

Cid Harbour turned out to fulfill all promises. Turtles swam around the boats and occasionally popped up their heads to have a look at us (they never came too close, though). Unfortunately they were eventually scared away by a jerk on a jetski (which I'm pretty sure are illegal in the area).

We cleaned out the last of our stinking bait from the stern lockers, which first attracted a flock of seagulls. They scattered, however, when a pair of sea eagles (of which I got only a crappy picture, alas) came to try to claim some dinner. The gulls were inelegant but efficient, flopping down into the water and grabbing the baitfish with their beaks. The eagles, however, would dive with talons extended to try to pluck their prey from the water, but never actually succeeded. We thought they might be better at catching live fish, but I saw them feeding again in the morning and they still weren't having much success.

The next day was our final full day of sailing and we needed to finish up anchored near the marina. We decided to go flat out and hit Blue Pearl Bay for more snorkeling, instead of just puttering back home. We were all glad to do it, because the snorkeling there was awesome - far better than what we had seen so far.

We whipped up some lunch and then got underway for the long, but relatively straight sail to our final destination. Josh (who had been diligently manning the helm all week) finally got some rest that afternoon as other people stepped in to run the boat and he did a little reading, as well as some mast climbing.

Our last night on the boat was in Muddy Bay, just across from Abel Point (where we needed to bring the boat back at 8AM the next morning). Josh dinghied in to grab a newspaper and some ice cream (Joshua C Randall Dairy Co. anybody?) I scrubbed the daylights out of the gel coat for the second night in a row with a supertoxic concentration of acid - my efforts paid off though, the stain was eventually vanquished!

We all took leave of the Interlude, including me photographing various areas of the interior, including the breaker panel (conveniently labelled in English and French) and an action shot of me operating the radio (we had scheduled call-ins every morning and afternoon).

I wasn't ready for it to end, but that about wraps up what is probably the best holiday I've ever taken!