The next morning, I got up early and had the pleasure of having the boat to myself for a bit in the early light. No dawn, as the island whose harbor was sheltering us blocked it, but it was a great chance to just soak up the scene and realize (again!) how unbelievably lucky I was. Yup, no chance of me taking this sort of thing for granted...
The waves were higher as we rounded the point, so we had an hour of decent-sized swells crashing over the bow, keeping us alert by randomly dousing us with water... the best defense was a good offense, so I ended up sitting right on the bow triple-dog-daring the waves to get me. I ended up pretty wet and humbled, but it was still a very good time.
Our morning sail took us to Hook Bay, with some more snorkelling among some awesome multi-level coral formations, then it was off to Turtle Bay, named for (drum roll, please)... well, turtles. With loads of sea grass, dozens use this harbor as home, so we got to see a bunch just tooling around the water...
We took the launch ashore, and had an afternoon on Whitehaven Beach – one of the larger of the Whitsundays. First it was up to a view point... you can't see in the pic, but the shallows were rife with dozens of stingrays.
… and then we got a view of a somewhat closer nature – a (to me at least) freakishly larger Golden Orb spider in its web.
No, no – no girlie squeals here... I just made seriously sure that my camera lens was no where close to the web. Closeups are great – but that would be pushing things a bit...
We got to chill out at the beach itself, and thankfully, the stingrays bailed out while the tourists were about, so we didn't have to worry 'bout the odd stinger in the foot.
Some more sun, biscuits, and some frisbee and then we were back on the boat for a lasagne dinner, and teaching Hearts to a cool mother/daughter Alaskan duo.
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