For the past three days and two nights Heide and I have been bobbing up and down. I suspect that more than one or two smutty minds out there (primarily  amongst my mates of course) are thinking:  "aye, aye, they've gone and spiced  up this site" but I'm sorry  to disappoint; we've been aboard a fine sailing  yacht rolling  around the Whitsundays off the coast of Queensland. I suppose it’s not unusual for me to have been rolling around for a few days but this time it was purely a result of the swell and the winds that buffeted our 47 footer.

We were, along with two other couples, aboard the good boat Prima. The yacht was crewed by a pair of true blue, pommie hating Aussies:  Graham the skipper and his partner (in love, work and sparring) Annie. To say the least, these two were an "interesting" couple. Indeed, to describe them as anything but "interesting" would sell them short. Annie was clearly a very experienced sailor (more so than Graham as far as we could tell) but was only allowed to be the host as she didn't have her certification.  I suspect that this was a slight sore spot, well perhaps something of a raw, gaping, pus oozing, life threatening wound actually. Still, she was a quite wonderful host and the food she produced was superb.  Graham, well, he was certainly pretty different. Here's a  guy who  is in his 60's, wears naught but skimpy (very skimpy) Speedos and  by his own admission would prefer not to be in those either  and is  more tempestuous than any southern seas cyclone. The two of them together!? Wow, more fiery than Mount Etna letting rip on a particularly spectacular eruption! However I'm delighted to say that they really helped make a wonderful, memorable trip. And for all the right reasons too!

While  I must say  up front that I'm not a "yachty type" (though there could be  a  heck of a lot worse to be) I have dreamed of sailing in these waters  for  years. I'm delighted to say that Heide didn't need much in the way of encouragement to agree to this jaunt either. We spent a couple  of days in the  marina town of Airlie Beach (which oddly enough has  no beach but I suppose  that simply calling the place Airlie would have  pulled in fewer holiday  makers) shopping around for the right  boat for us. We thought we'd found it on a small boat called the Calista, but the trip was cancelled as the company didn’t want to sail with only the pair of us and the crew. We were paying for a shared trip not a private charter! So we opted for the Prima instead and we’re glad we did. I've no idea what the Calista would have been like but we would have been deprived of the Graham and Annie show if we'd gone elsewhere.

The weather was, for the most part, ideal for sailing. In other words, pretty bloody horrible! One of the guests, lass from West Australia spent the first, oh, eight or nine hours leaning out over the back of the boat feeding the fishes with last nights Tequila and pizza. Ohh is it any wonder that reef life is colorful?

We raced out through some choppy water, which was fabulous fun, something like a fair ground ride designed by some sadistic evil genius. We rocked, we rolled, and we skimmed along at an outrageous angle getting soaked all the while by huge waves washing over us. Oh how we whooped for joy, like a bunch of demonic loons on a scalping mission. Well the lads did anyway. As I mentioned one lass was tied  to the  back feeling dreadful, Heide was grasping her "Omigod bar" a railing  along the side of the boat to which she clung for dear life  yelling "oh  God!" or other things not suited for a family  site such as this. The poor  third lass, a young German, was  just a peculiar shade of white, worryingly  for her she was  as white as my eyebrows (zoom in on any picture of me) and  was quiet,  very quiet!

Still after only a few hours we were dropping the anchor so that we could plunge into the reef and marvel at the glory of a whole new world, under the water in the Great Barrier Reef. It was amazing.  Colours so impressive that even the greatest of rainbows would be forever envious. Added to the incredible platelet smeared with hues that only some master artist could dream of, were some exciting and potentially painful creatures swimming with us. Sharks, sting rays, deadly jellyfish and no doubt  a bunch of other goodies that I missed. Being a bit of a sadder whenever I was lucky enough to see a creature that could maim or kill I did the obvious thing; I swam after them. Sadly they were much too quick for me.

We slept on board in those peculiar shaped beds that angle with the boat, thus allow you about 7 feet of personal space at one end of the bed and about four inches at the other. Still nocturnal gymnastics (to those smutty folk I referenced earlier... hold it!) allowed us to find a position suitable for getting a good sleep, interrupted only by the odd tropical down pour which would flood through the open hatches. While there seems to be hundreds of vessels plying their trade in these waters we managed to find a number of secluded spots to moor for the night. On the first evening we stopped just off Esk Island with amazing views across the water to Whitehaven Beach (which really is a beach) the sand on Whitehaven is so white that it looks like snow. The second night we spent in a small bay called Maureen Cove. We would have stopped somewhere else but much, actually very much, to Graham's disgust another boat had the outrageous audacity to moor up for the night before we got there.  

We really did have a terrific time out there and would gladly do it again, and this despite the haunting we'll no doubt suffer as a result of Graham's Speedos!