Aboard Matador for our 2 day 2 night sailing adventure, we were introduced to the members of 4 crew and the boat together with some of it’s racing history in which it won 2 championships which we figure was a fair while ago due to the outside looking fairly new but the inside looking rather tired.

We spent the rest of the day sailing out to our anchoring point for the evening. During the day we got to know our fellow shipmates who were from all over the world and to some features of the boat. One particularly memorable one was the toilet, in which after doing the deed you had to keep the flushing mechanism (a blender to make the contents fit down the narrow pipes and into a holding tank) held down for 15 seconds. We were also shown to our beds, as it was previously a racing yacht head room in the bunk beds was only about 20 inches then you would hit your head on the bunk above. On deck though the views were amazing and we sunned ourselves whilst the crew made us feel very comfortable with drinks and snacks.

Next day we headed to Whitsunday Island which we were sailing around we went to Observation Point giving a view of Whitehaven Beach, a stunning white beach spanning the length of the island (made up of 98% silica apparently) surrounded by green lagoon waters which had been somewhat churned up given the current weather conditions.

A the short walk to observation point we went for a swim in the water, but we were in stinger season so we all had to wear a stinger suit (similar to a wet suit but very thin) which ruined some of the fun and restricted our movement when we began playing frisbee. After frisbee we successfully attempted to build a pyramid with 10 people on the beach.

It was pretty windy today so we were guided through putting up the sails, there were no hydraulics to lift the sail or if there was, it was broken so it took 8 people clambering over one another towards the end in an effort to lift up the main sail weighing several tonnes.

In the afternoon we anchored up in Hazelwood Island where we could do our free dive (the only freebie we got out of the Freight Train debacle), the weather hadn’t been very good over the past few days with lots of rain which had stirred up the sea making the visibility a meagre 2 metres. Due to the visibility we didn’t see very much besides a pretty big stingray and a few jellyfish hanging around. After our dive, we had to wait for the other people snorkelling to come back to the boat so in the meantime we made use of the diving board on the boat to perfect our back and forward flip techniques, as you can see it was well worth it.

After an exhausting day of sightseeing and diving we spent the evening relaxing with the group and crew who got us involved in some rather ingenious drinking games…

We spent most of the journey back on the last day sailing, some other groups had the opportunity of more snorkelling or diving but given the poor visibility we weren’t disappointed we missed out. On the way back there was a fair bit of wind the sails were up again and we were going at a rate of knots back to Abel Point Harbour where we would return to dry land. It was sad to leave the boat with the huge portions of good quality food and enjoyable company of the other people onboard but we will not miss the really smelly toilet/blender which kept Mike awake most nights.

After getting off the boat we head to the lagoon for our daily shower, being back on dry land felt a bit strange at first as though we were still moving side to side on the boat, it was quite disorienting at times and took the rest of the day to overcome. In the evening we met up with all the other people and crew for a drink before heading off for Ayr to do our wreck dive the next day.