So today I had to be up and ready for 7am to get to the marina.
The crew on the boat were quite young and really friendly, when we got there we were given muffins and tea/coffee. There were two irish sisters on the boat and one of them had actually been on my plane to Australia so spoke to them two a little bit and then sat with two German girls.
We were sailing for two hours to get out to the Great Barrier Reef and as we got nearer to it you could see the water becoming bluer and bluer to the point where it was like a bright turquoise blue; it was absolutely amazing!!! We also saw a dolphin jump out the water as we sailed out.
We were given flippers and snorkel masks and anyone who was doing a dive was given more instructions and a wet suit. I decided not to do a dive, purely because you had to pay quite a lot extra.
They dropped anchor and we had a couple of hours to snorkel before dinner. Luckily for me as I'm a wuss when it comes to water they had life jackets that kept you afloat so you could pretty much not even swim and I didn't feel like a total retard because the majority of people wore them. To stop your goggles steaming up you had to full on spit in them before putting them on, that was pleasant lol.
The water was pretty cool but was obviously warmer than any sea I've been in, in England.
When I first put my head under I got a bit freaked out because you could hear yourself breathing so clearly and I kept getting mouthfuls of water. After I realised it was because I was doing it wrong, no surprise there, I relaxed and started to really enjoy it. I've never seen such clear water and the coral and reefs were so beautiful and multi-coloured, the crew picked up sea cucumber's from the seabed and they are disgusting; they look like black willy's and even squirt water out one end haha, I held it for a while but it was pretty gross.
I also found I wasnt particularly good at stopping in the water; I would be swimming (floating) along fine using the flippers when I'd need to stop and just find it impossible to put my flippers down into the water... So there I am floating with my legs stuck in the air being unable to stop, really pretty sight. I even ended up bumping into people and floating over them haha.
After, we'd messed around and snorkelled for a while we went back onto the boat for dinner.
Then, the boat had a smaller speed boat attached so took us all over to green island (the nearest island on the reef) and we had two hours to do what we liked.
So myself and the two German girls walked round the whole island taking pictures and just admiring the beautifulness of everything really. The sand was so white and the water was as clear as what you buy in a bottle, not brown like our sea water.
We then messed about in the sea for a bit then sunbathed before they picked us up off the island. Back on the main boat and we had some more snorkel time, the sun had come out more now and the water was absolutely crystal clear, when I jumped in I was surrounded by about thirty fish and even some reef sharks.
The German girls had an underwater camera so I took pictures of them and a few sneaky ones of myself (but don't think I have any way to get a copy of them) then I saw little dory but never even got a glimpse of nemo, bit gutted about that. When I'd swam around a bit more, we sailed back and were given trays of fruit, cheese and cakes. The water was still beautifully clear all the way back.

When I got back to the hostel I watched the inbetweeners movie with paulien and then just packed my bag ready to leave the next day.

I haven't particularly liked cairns that much as I found there's not a lot to do unless you have money to spend which I didn't.