Sailing the Whitsundays

There are so many places to discover the Great Barrier Reef along the east coast that it wasn’t easy to decide where we wanted to do it. As we also wanted to go on a sailing trip and discover the Whitsunday Islands and Whitehaven Beach, we decided to combine all of that. So we arrived in Airlie Beach as our last stop in Australia before heading back to Sydney to fly on to Singapore. We spent one whole day exploring the Islands on Jetski. That was so much fun! Speeding across the ocean and jumping massive waves was a great adrenalin rush The following two days we spent on a sailing boat and sailed out to the reef to go snorkeling. What a fabulous trip! We had booked a tour on a former racing boat with a small group. The skipper was really doing what he loved most: we took advantage of the partly cloudy weather and great wind speeds and had the sails up almost the whole time, passing dolphins on the way. Mathias absolutely loved helping out the crew. We stopped at Whitehaven Beach to see one of the whitest beaches on the planet and the beautiful scenery that unfolds when the tide goes out.  After some relaxing time there, we sailed into the sunset and anchored at a quiet bay where we went snorkeling the next morning. Even though we didn’t have enough sunshine to light up the reef colours to their perfect beauty, it was still simply incredible to see the reef in all its different shapes and colours with hundreds of different fish swimming everywhere. And we even saw a turtle ;)!! It was such a perfect finish to our tour through Australia. We will definately be back here to do a longer sailing tour.