Day 70

Monday 10^th January 2011

Hold on a minute… this doesn’t feel like the bed I went to sleep in, oh yeah, it isn’t the bed I went to sleep in, what’s going on? Oh I remember…Suz is gonna be mad! Is the general gist of how the day started. I took myself to the shower and tried to negotiate with my hangover (which was a bit of a belter!)

We checked out for 10:00 and had to check in for our “Cruise around the Whitsundays”. After a spot of brekkie at Harry’s I had to go on the hunt to replace my lost hat and shades. I had left them in the taxi in Brisbane the day before. That sorted we headed down to the harbour to stock up on some booze and meet the group we were going sailing with.




36 cans of beer and a box of Sminoff and blood orange should do the trick just nicely, although when we bought it I was trying to convince Suz that I wouldn’t be drinking that day. We sat down with our group which consisted of an American, two Italians, Two Swedes, two Germans and not a drop of alcohol between them. Oh dear, where going to be the annoying drunk people….again! We were informed that we were waiting on two other people who had literally just booked on the trip. Ten minutes later and mercifully, an Irish bloke and his missus rounded the corner carrying a big box of VB bitter, drinking buddies, alright! We boarded the boat and met the crew.

Now, I don’t want give you the wrong impression here buy saying that we were on a cruise. The boat was tiny, like really tiny and when I say crew, well, that consisted of Steve (a really obnoxious, sexist, know it all Aussie skipper) and Michelle (the deck girl/ chef from Hull).

We were briefed on safety, how long to flush a toilet for when at sea (15 seconds if you're interested) and where our muster point was, I forget now but he did tell us where it was. We were also told not to leave lights on as we needed the electricity to last three days, anybody who left a light on would have to eat a spoonful of Vegimite, eeewwwwwww!!!

We set sail and headed out around some islands for a few hours, I was starting to feel a little better and so under pressure from Dave (Irish fella) we started drinking again.

After about three hours we stopped and had a snorkel around, this was explained by Steve as a training site to see who could swim etc etc.

We spent about an hour in there, we swam with a turtle for about five minutes until he sped off and saw loads of parrot fish. The only down side was that as soon as the Kodak Underwater camera we had bought (and used to good effect all around the world) touched the sea it died. It leaked and filled up with water, we bought the sodding thing specifically for the Whitsundays!!!

Back on board the boat Michelle started tea whilst us and the Irish tucked into the beers once more. After tea Steve called us all to sit around and we played a breaking the ice game, where you from, how long have you been travelling, favourite place blah blah blah. We moored up for the night at a place called Narra Bay and spent it swallowing huge amounts of beer and unfortunately for me, a huge spoonful of Vegimite, I left my bathroom light on and Steve was onto it in a flash, for the record, Vegimite is the most disgusting thing I have ever put into my mouth!.

Dave got more Irish as the night progressed and was absolutely incoherent by 22:00. When he went to bed he couldnt work out how to take his shorts of so he just gave them a good pull and ripped a hole in the groin area, he had to wear these shorts for the next two days.

We all decided to call it a night and went to bed. The rooms were so so so so so so so small and so so hot. The room was basically a single bed, that was it, you crawled onto the bed, closed the door and then sweated all night, yippee! I was talking to my Mum the other day about the cruise and the possibility that it might rain. She said, “oh don’t worry about it raining, if it does you just go to one on the bars”. It really isn’t one of those cruises!!