The Whitsundays

I am back on land but am missing the ebbs and sways of my short nautical adventure, I’ve spent three days and two nights onboard the Tongarra sailing though tropical Whitsundays. The Tongarra (aboriginal for wildcat) catamaran doesn’t have the same pedigree as the other adapted racing boat and is modest in both size and speed. We were around twenty deckhands watched over by skipper Ash and Dave who brought personality to the yacht.

Throughout the voyage the sea was restless and unsettled but it was never worse than when we departed the marina. Wave erupted onto the deck drenching all in cool spray. It took a while for my sealegs to return but once they did we tried to make a human pyramid on the bow of the ship. On our first night we’d nestled close to the shelter of an island and enjoyed goon with our crewmates, but eventually when everyone became tired from the sea air and wanted to retire so we pulled out bedding from below deck, hoisted canvases to shield the elements and we slept beneath the stars. For what seemed only like a few hours of rest we awoke at the break of dawn to ‘good morning Vietnam’ and sailed with the tide to Whitehaven beach. This seemingly unassuming beach is pretty special, the sand is the purest on earth with the grains being 95% silica so pure you can brush your teeth with it if you so wish. This stretch of sand has been harvested only once and that was to create the most powerful lens in the world that sits inside the Hubble Space Telescope. Before swimming for shore to the sound of the jaws theme we had to pull on our stinger suits to protect us from Box Jellyfish, Iracongi and Man of War. These guys are very interesting, first the Box jellyfish, it preys on crabs so comes equipped with a particularly severe sting that can penetrate and overwhelm a tough crab's hide, unfortunately this also has a rather detrimental effect on our own soft fleshy bodies and can cause instant cardiac arrest. The Iracongi isn’t native to Australian waters and little was known about this little bastard until a few year ago. They make their trip to oz as stow aways smuggled in ballast tanks of cargo ships. They are actually indigenous to Asia meaning these guys have been my swimming buddies for the past 5 months. Practically invisible and tiny in size (smaller than your smallest fingernail) apparently being stung merely feels like a hair being plucked, but within a few hours the nausea and excruciating pain set in and you can only be dosed up on morphine to ease the pain, so apparently the Man of War is pretty tame compared to these two! But luckily we didn’t encounter anything more dangerous than a clump of seaweed. Beyond the beach was dense rainforest and walking along a trail we had to duck under Golden Orb Spiders with thick mandibles and fully spread out over their webs where about the size of a dinner plate, we came across patrolling monitor lizards with tongue whipping back and forth tasting the air and ants with green backs that if you put your tongue to their bums they tasted like sour lime, I can confirm this to be true.

We snorkeled in Manta Ray Bay. The crew fed the fish creating a flurry of colours and scales that brushed past my face. Lower down the big predatory fish took the chaotic frenzy as an opportunity to snap up the distracted and vulnerable, further away a face of a turtle broke the water’s surface, took breath and disappeared. By evening the clouds bled crimson and splinters of light met with the ocean’s surface, we devoted the night to drinking games that, within teams we wore fancy dress, licked vegemite from bellybuttons and tried to pop balloons, by the end of the games the majority had forfeited most of their clothes and all our team where butt naked. We won. Our last morning I got stuck in with the crew jobs, singing the gay pirate song but mainly relaxed on the brilliant white bow where the sun shone and a few icy showers pelted us until we returned to the marina.