Our Sailing Adventure! - The Whitsundays and Great Barrier Reef

 The highlight of our time traveling in Aussie has been this sailing trip.  We met some great people, spent two and a half days (three nights) on a sailboat, and had our first go at scuba diving on the famous Great Barrier Reef!  Above is a picture of our "Dream Team" scuba group.  Matthias (Germany) and Asta (Finland) joined us headed up by Richie Rich, our instructor. 

 Do you recognize that guy?  What a dude.  (This is Aimee)

 A view of the front of our catamaran and the Whitsundays in the distance.

Our whole team minus the crew.  Behind us is Whitehaven Beach, BBC's top rated beach for the past four years.  Let me clarify.  Top beach IN THE WORLD.  It was our only sunny sky for the two hours we spent here.  This was my birthday (Aimee) and it was an amazing way to spend it!

 We look a little bit different underwater, eh?  Richie took our picture.  Jon's got his signature gesture going on.

Lots of Nemos!

Yes, we did swim with sharks!  This was an amazing overcoming of fear for me (Aimee).  These reef sharks were harmless to us.  This is a white-tipped reef shark.

We could add pictures of the aqualife all day!  But here was one of our favs.  The sea turtle, so beautiful and majestic.

So much beauty under the surface.

The clouds finally broke up on our trip back home

All in all, it was an amazing experience. It was a new experience for us to be living at sea. We even anchored at the GB Reef for a night, no land in sight! We passed through the infamous Whitsunday Islands and landed once to go to Whitehaven beach. Apparently a night's stay on one of the islands is $9000. We definitely got the better deal! The four crew members helped us stay positive about the grey weather and the sea-sickness.  They were great. The week we were at sea, it rained and rained.  It was probably one of the best ways we could have spent that rainy week... under the water.  We ended up each diving four times, more than we had planned on.  It was that good - one of the most memorable experiences of our lives.  When we got back, tourists and locals alike were complaining about the weather.  Dry season?  Climate change.

We stayed at Airlie Beach when we returned for dinner with some of the other passengers we had met on the boat, from all over the world.  It was a good end to the week.