I'm on a boat.

Wowowowow! So I'm in America once again, finally catching up on my blogging. You ask, well what about the past week Lauren? What gives? In this episodes friends you will find out exactly what gives, though I apologize for my silence. So we left off in Whitsundays the night before my boat voyage. We arose early next morn and set off on a long walk around the shore to the marina of Airlie Beach. We were picked up there by two tan, blond, strapping lads that turned out to be our crew! They led us to our sailboat, the Hammer, a sweet racing sailboat that would be our home for the next 36 hours. We were led below deck where we were introduced to our cozy living quarters. This place was SMALL. And it's able to house 23! Luckily our group of 16 had the place to ourselves, plus our crew of 3. The beds were little mattress-clad shelves jutting out all over he place. The ceiling was quite low too, and windows from room to room left no privacy. Luckily we're all quite close by now. Most fun was the windows in the ceiling everywhere, so you could creep from above deck, or pop up from below like meerkats. We soon met the crew: Will is 19 and hails from England [and is CRAZY, such a cocky guy, though quite finny], Neils is 20 and from Holland. Both came to Australia fresh and looking to learn to sail and got this awesome gig sailing around beautiful islands with tourists! Our third crew man was the Skipper [a captain- type position], Micko. He was such a bro, he's awesome. He let me steer the boat the first day as we made our way to Whitehaven beach, which is on Whitsunday island and is a very impressive beach. It has the finest sand in the world, it's pure white and the water is light blue and so clear. It's one of the worlds most beautiful beaches and there's no development at all on the island. This sand was used to make the Hubble telescope lens, it's that big of a deal. If you steal any its a massive fine. So we landed on the other side of the island and took a hike to a beautiful lookout over the beach, it was actually breathtaking, post-card status. We snapped some pics and trotted down to the beach! We frolicked around in the water in our extremely attractive stinger suits [like thin, embarrassing looking wet suits], splashing each other and feeling out about being somewhere so beautiful. I went for a lovely walk around the beach, which meanders in and out from the forest line and includes a series of sand bars. The coast wraps around too so he area is a secluded sort of horseshoe shaped paradise. We found neat shells and swam with stingrays! Their tails are MASSIVE, no wonder it killed Steve Erwin. These were peaceful ones though and nowhere near our hearts. Then I went to my bag to take a picture with my phone. Then I realized I had set my phone down at the lookout to take a picture for my friend and never picked it up. Then I got to do some [panicked] running as I returned to the lookout to search for my phone. Unfortunately, all the beach merriment gave someone time to take my phone, a mondo bummer. I asked everyone on the deserted beach if they'd seen it but no one had. Alas, I was separated from the Internet for the remainder of the trip. Anyways, the beach was lovely. Next we did some more boat things and suddenly it was nighttime! We had an awesome night playing games with Will and Neils and spotting dolphins, squid, sharks, and fishies as they came right up to the end of our boat. I drank a ton of tea. We could see the stars really well too, it was magnificent. Then I crawled onto my shelf and let the ocean rock me to sleep! The next day we awoke and snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef! This sucker is the largest living organism in the world! Mountains of coral were right under me, and if I held still fish would erupt out of every cranny and swim all around me, I could even poke them. It was beautiful and salty. The rest of the day was sunning like lizards and drinking tea and...SAILING. IT WAS AWESOME. We felt so speedy, and I got to be in charge of turning this crank to adjust the winches to control the front sail. It was incredible, the boat zips around at a huge tilt, 40 some degrees, so everyone [except me as special winch girl] has to sit on the high side and hold on to prevent sliding back. It was SO COOL. And sails are just beautiful. Aaaaand that was really it for Whitsunday! Sailing is neat. Here are pictures I stole from others.

The bow!

Whitehaven. Wowza.

Micko the thug

Ahoy

Next: Fraser Island and Brisbane!