Most of the 11th went with updating the homepage. We had several days to catch up with and the fine tuning always takes more time than anticipated :-| With a bit of stress though, we made it to Kelly's Dive & Sail where we had to meet at 7 pm for the Anaconda III cruise.

Aboard the boat we got an introduction of the crew, a short briefing, a bit of chitchat with the other passengers and then went to bed whilst the crew was anchoring up at Nara Inlet on Hook Island.

The 12th started pretty early - it was 6:30 when Justin (first mate) knocked on our doors. It was time for a short bush walk on Hook Island. The ancient Aboriginal rock paintings we were shown weren't that exciting, but seeing the sun rise over Nara Inlet was beautiful and well worth the early wake up.

Breakfast was served when we came back to the yacht.

Next stop was Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island, the largest island in the Whitsunday group. A world famous beach, known for it's incredible white sand - so bright that it can be seen from outer space (that's what we were told anyway). It's a long stretch of paradise where we spent one and a half hours sunbathing, frisbee'ing, and swimming - we also spotted a large ray close to shore.

Later that day, Dirk had a scuba dive at a coral reef that is surrounding most of the islands while the others were snorkeling and had a scuba dive briefing to prepare for the introductory dive next day on the reef.

The 13th was reef-day. Throughout the morning, Anaconda III had been heading for the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) and arrived at around 10am at Bait Reef. GBR consists of thousands of smaller reefs, stretching for about 2000 km from as far south as Gladstone, all the way up to Torres Strait just south of Papua New Guinea. We spent the whole day snorkeling, diving, sunbathing, and eating what Nicki (the cook) had prepared for us. As you can see, a stressful environment ;-).

Dirk was scuba diving most of the day whereas the other three were snorkeling and had their introductory dive. The snorkeling was particularly good in the afternoon when the tide was low. The crew had to pull us out of the water (we didn't go by our own free will) because Anaconda III had to leave the reef and head back to the Whitsundays - Hayman Island to be specific.

The evening was fun with everybody getting together up on deck, telling jokes, and playing party games.

The last day on Anaconda III began with another snorkeling excursion near Hayman Island - home of one of the most exclusive and thereby expensive resorts in the Whitsundays (the cheapest room is about $500 a night). Shortly after the snorkeling, the boat started heading back to Airlie Beach, where our journey had started three days ago. At around 3 PM, we had firm ground beneath our feet again.

All in all we had a really pleasant and relaxing trip and it was a great way to get to the outer Great Barrier Reef. However, we had thought that it would have been a sailing trip around the Whitsundays and it wasn't. We didn't see that much of the islands and we never saw the sails as we at no time had enough of a breeze to fill them. It was more a diving and snorkeling trip on a motorboat. One thing, though, that couldn't have been much better were the passengers - a bunch of different but very kind and friendly people from all over the world.

The day wasn't over yet! In the evening most of the Anaconda III passengers and some of the crew had a get-together at the ReefO's bar, a bit outside of Airlie Beach. Beer was flowing, stories told and email addresses exchanged. The hard core of this gang made it downtown to Airlie Beach for some extended partying before heading home for a good night's sleep.

One last comment on the Great Barrier Reef: We were all a little bit disappointed - probably due to very high expectations, as everybody had told us how magnificent and outstanding the GBR is. It is indeed a great place to snorkel and dive - it's not the only great place though. We all thought we had seen at least equally good reefs before. The Ningaloo Reef on the western side of Australia seems a bit less spoiled then what we've seen of the GBR.