Welcome to the Whitsunday Islands!

This is the first day of our sail.  The orientation for the charter was scheduled for 4 hours so we wanted to get an early start.  We went to the dive shop to pick up our snorkel gear and stinger suits.  The stinger suits are basically very thin neoprene wetsuits (although some were made of lycra and others looked like full body stockings) and offer protection from the box and irukundji jellyfish (aka “stingers”).  Both of these jellyfish are prevalent in the area during the summer and very dangerous, even deadly.  The odds of being stung were probably pretty low but you definitely did not want to chance it.

We met Don, the representative from Whitsunday Escapes, and he was super nice and mellow.  He knew we had some sailing experience so he didn't waste a lot of time on the basics.  He showed us around the boat and demonstrated how all the systems (stove, navigation, fresh water, VHF, etc.) worked.  One of the engines wasn't working at first so we had a little down time while they fixed it.  Luckily, they did a good job and it did not give us any trouble after that.  Then he motored us out of our slip and handed the helm to Annemarie and she took us out into the harbour.

Once we got into the main harbour, he showed us how to set the sails and then basically said “Have a fun trip!”  He jumped into his dinghy and left us to start our trip.

Annemarie taking us out of Abel Point Marina

Every day we have to be anchored by 4pm so we only had about 4 hours to get to our first anchorage.  We looked on the charts and picked Stonehaven Anchorage on Hook Island about 15miles (nautical miles) away.

Leaving Abel Point

Lulu is a good-sized catamaran but she is very easy to sail and has a self-tacking jib which makes sail handling a lot easier.  The winds were light, around 5-10 knots, so it took us 4 solid hours to get to Stonehaven.  We just made the 4pm cut-off and picked up a mooring.

Since there was still a lot of daylight left, we jumped in our dinghy and started motoring to the beach.  There was a lot of coral so we decided to cut the engines and paddle the rest of the way in.  The tide was very low and so the beach was wide.  We dragged the dinghy on shore and walked around a bit and took some pictures.

Beach at Stonehaven, Hook Island

It was getting late and we were getting hungry so we headed back to the boat.

We cooked our first meal on a boat and it consisted of basa (a fish), green beans and couscous.  The fish was really good so we were pleased with our first try.

Our first delicious dinner on a boat 

After washing our plates and cleaning the galley, we were pretty beat from the long day and crawled into our full-sized berth.  This was tough to get used to after our nice king bed at home!