Looking west towards the mainland from Whitsunday Island

We have finished our cruise through the Whitsunday Islands. The scenery was gorgeous, the anchorages were very safe and plentiful but the weather was the pits. After the wind stopped howling the rain came. It sputtered off and on for about 3 days, so my memories of the Whitsundays will have grey skies and mist floating about the top of the peaks attached to it. We stopped by Whitehaven Beach, rated on of the top ten beaches in the world. The sand was definitley different, very fine and soft, wonderful to walk upon. We sailed around to the other side of Whitsunday Island and I climbed the Whitsunday peak at 430 m. to see the sites. Of course the peak was shrouded with mist so I could only occaisionly glimpse the water. I jumped in for a swim when I got back, it was very refreshing.

Whitehaven Beach in the rain

We headed off to Airlie Beach the next day. Someone told me there was a rum bar which stocked rums from all over the world and said it was a must do. Trish also worked there over 10 years ago and sent us a post card. We had always wanted to go, now here we are on our own boat, living the dream. Anyway I guess this bar had a fire last week and is closed for renovations, just missed it by about a week, oh well, what can you do, first the Man from Snowy River Museum was closed, now this, I wonder what else that I want to see will be closed, things always happen in threes. We went into the spot where Trish worked and took our $1.00 coin and hit the "Pokies" as the slot machines are called here. We always go in and spend a dollar, Barry seems to be the lucky one and at one spot won $64.00. Here we came away $6.00 ahead, not bad. the most we should ever loose is $2.00 between us, some harmless fun. Airle Beach is a real tourist town, lots of travel agents where you can get tours of the Whitsundays, diving cruises, etc. There are also lots of bars and hamburger joints, there were not very many ethnic restaurants to choose from, I wanted a Thai meal but there were no Thai restaurants in site.

At the moment we are about 40 miles north of Airlie headed to Bowen. We hope to make up some distance in the next couple of days, so we won't go into Bowen our next town will be Townsville. We have been told that Magnetic Island is an interesting spot to stop so may spend a couple of days there. Hope everyone in Canada had a great long weekend. The ice in Back Bay in Yellowknife must be getting pretty thin.

Through the mist from the top of the Whitsunday Peak.