Well.

The Plan

Leave Bundaberg at 6PM, Mike to drive the first 350 odd KMs, followed by John and then me the rest; we would arrive in Airlie Beach between 4-5AM have some sleep and then at 12PM head out to sea on Freight Train, part of the the Oz Sail fleet of maxi’s. Enjoy Sun, Sea… Job Done.

The real thing

What we didn’t realise was just how tired we would be after completing our Open water PADI course, Mike had driven around 60 KMs and I decided to go to sleep in the back of the van whilst Mike was driving. We stopped for some dinner at a service station, I went back to bed and Mike carried on driving after our short break. Another hour later Mike was clearly in state unfit to drive, where he and John (his co-driver) seemed to be taking turns falling asleep or should that be keeping each other awake, according to them at least.

I was still sleeping on the bed in the back. John took over driving and I stepped up to co-pilot refreshed after about 2 or 3 hours sleep. Keeping Mike awake had clearly taken it’s toll on John who was also too tired to drive. With Mike sleeping in the bed in the back and john sleeping in the co-pilot seat, I started driving with solo control of the iPod. Conditions driving to Airlie deteriorated greatly with torrential rain in the last stretch of road, 906KMs later we arrived in Airlie beach at 5AM and parked up at the side of the road for some well needed recuperation.

At 6:30AM we had a knock on the window of the van, “Hey, open up I know you’re in there”. We all looked at each other, whispering, “Who could that be”, knowing it would be a warden to fine a us for sleeping in our van on the street. “Come on open up, I’d like to have a chat”, the voice said again. With that John opened the side door and poked his head out and started explaining our situation, just arrived at 5:30, nowhere was open. He started sounding slightly sympathetic, then Mike and I poked our heads around the door. To which the warden exclaimed, “Blimey, there’s 3 of you in there. It must be like a tin of Sardines”, to be fair he wasn’t too far off the mark. After seeing us all, he suggested we go grab a coffee and find somewhere else to stay, what nice man. We had heard from others the fines can be quite huge, in the order of hundreds of dollars. We considered ourselves lucky and would choose our next spot more wisely.

We drove to the Lagoon, an inland open air pool for a dip and a shower. An outdoor shower, so at 7:30 in the morning the life guards and other swimmers were greeted with the sight of 3 guys lathering themselves up, with our swimmers still on I’ll add. We’re not exhibitionists, and we don’t want to get arrested.

All clean, we went for breakfast in McDonalds and hung around that area whilst we waited for the heavy rain to ease off. Later we checked in for Freight train, at this point we were getting pretty excited and went shopping for some more goon to take on board with us. We arrived at the dock to board Freight train at 12:30, we waited a fair while before the director came to speak to us to let us know there was a problem with the boat, it was on it’s way from being pressure tested and to be fitted into the boat. We were told to go away and come back at 5:30. 5.30 came and still no word on the part still being pressure tested, and 7:30 we were told the boat was going nowhere and we would have to get a refund or transfer onto another boat. After todays antics we didn’t want to go with Oz Sail again so opted for a refund, or would have done if their machine would work. Instead we had to go back to the booking office to sort it out the next day.

Rant over.

The next day we got our money back to look for a similar trip with another company, unable to find one at a reasonable price, we had to book again with Oz Sail on Matador, a 85 ft maxi. We were told Matador was a far superior boat but didn’t sail for another day. We wasted the rest of that day and the next day by the lagoon.

On the day of our departure we headed back to the port to board Matador, straight away it seemed more organised. The crew were there to greet us, to let us know some maintenance had overrun (OH KNOW, NOT AGAIN!!!), but in the meantime they would check us in. By the time that was complete we were off and boarding Matador. So good so far.