I have found some emails I wrote last year when we sailed 2XS down from the Whitsundays to Sydney, mid-September to mid-October.  The following was written when my daughter Nicky, her husband Gavin, and The Boys, Hamish (10) and Angus (8) were with us for three days before we left to charge down the coast.

Hamish and Angus were wonderful.  They enjoyed everything, were polite and happy, and kept themselves busy and quiet with Simpsons cartoons, soccer magazines, and their tiny little DVD player when nothing more adventurous was on offer.  Angus was ecstatic because he and Gavin snorkelled alongside a turtle this morning… We are all v envious, although we all did see many wonderful fish and coral at Blue Pearl Bay.  Nicky and Gavin were very happy to relax and enjoy the boat, the company, the scenery.  In fact I think I am writing the world’s most boring email… I am feeling v happy and relaxed too.

We had one night in Nara Inlet, where Pete took all the Wakefields on the short walk up to a cave with Aboriginal paintings. 

The next night we spent at Whitehaven Beach.  We went snorkelling at the end of the beach, and Nicky was very excited to see a shark.  It was, she said, bigger than her, and it moseyed along without seemed very interested.  Hamish was out of the water so fast it was as if his flippers were jet propelled… Angus stood benignly in the shallows, saying, in kind and soothing tones, “There’s no need to be afraid of a shark, Mummy” before he was back snorkelling along the rocks… I walked back along the beach to swim out to the boat and passed a woman who was camping at Whitehaven with her children.  She pointed out some turtles and said that she had seen a reef shark which had brushed past her on its way out to deeper water.  The next day Nicky and Gavin took the boys in to the beach in the tender, and Nicky heard a very excited conversation in a foreign language, which was basically “blah blah blah THIS BIG (in sign language…) blah blah” so this shark is obviously having a good time entertaining visitors to Whitehaven.

The next day we stopped at the most gorgeous idyllic little beach, Pinnacle Bay, I think.  Picture postcard perfect… Everyone went in to the beach in the tender, except me… I wanted to swim in…and back… Why do I have these superwoman pretensions??  I’m not really a very strong swimmer!  Fortunately I was wearing the enormous garage sale flippers which Pete bought and which have the effect of putting a big outboard motor on a small boat, otherwise I would never have made it back to the boat through the current and I would have had to be lugged aboard the tender in ignominious style… We all snorkelled around the rocks in Pinnacle Bay, but the coral was mostly dead, bashed by the violent storms they have in this part of the world.  So disappointing, especially for Angus, who REALLY wanted a Barrier Reef EXPERIENCE.  I lost track of Pete when I went back to check on Hamish and Angus, and then I lost him altogether… One of the most unpleasant moments of my life… I wanted to swim off to look for him, but Nicky called in her most stern teacher voice, “Mum come here to me NOW!!”  Gavin had the height advantage in the tender, and he was able to find Pete, who had gone a long way in the current.  They all chugged merrily back to the boat while Nicky and I swam…and swam…and swam… It is so hard swimming against the current.  I swallowed gallons of seawater and was very glad to haul myself up the ladder when I finally reached 2XS.

We moved on to Blue Pearl Bay where we waited patiently for a mooring.  We waited for an hour, then another hour, then… oh yawn… while a commercial catamaran,  Powerplay, loaded and unloaded divers on and off the beach.  They were obviously making a doco; they had shrieking girls in bikinis jumping cutely off the roof, and young men with ripped muscles frolicking in the bubblespa on the front deck.  They knew we were waiting, and had told us they would be another or hour so… Other boats were also waiting, but they knew we were next in line.  Just at sunset, a young bloke came over in a tender and said, casually, “We’ve decided to stay here overnight and do some night diving. See ya!”  Well, the crossness!!!  We were all outraged and some very choice language, you may be surprised to hear, fell from Headlam lips, to the delight of the younger Wakefields.  It was getting dark, v late to be looking for a mooring… Fortunately we found one just around the corner, here actually, on Langford Reef.  We had been here half an hour and oh look, what was coming past –that bloody Powerplay!!  They had done the dirty on us and had “given” the mooring to their friends in another cat.  Outrage!!  Consternation!!  War!  The boys were all so excited, none more than Pete.  He shone his search and rescue beacon on them in an AHA!  We know of your perfidy! way.  Nicky shouted at them in her Teacher Tones while the younger boys plotted dastardly revenge.  We all got over it but it created a lot of energy….

This morning we went to Blue Pearl Bay by eight and were all immediately snorkelling v happily, with five sets of equipment between six people – a bit of swapping.   Angus got his Barrier Reef experience…and we all saw many fish and lots of coral; bliss!