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Day 9 of the connections tour
Today was the much anticipated boat trip. when i say boat trip it was actually a full on sailing trip, a proper round the world 80ft professional sailing yauht called the raggamuffin.
With the impending cyclode the weather was bad and the seas were worse, much worse.we started out just on the onboard motor until we got out off the bay, then the front sail was lifted, this seemed like a good bit of sailing to me already, then we all had to get on the high side of the boat, it soon became apparent what high side and low side meant. the main sail was lifted and we soon picked up some speed and the boat seemed to be vertcal to the sea almost. if you were on the low side, which noone was you would have virtually been under water.
We had around 15 minutes of great sailing with huge waves crashing over us, we were all soaked, a few folk being sick nearer the back, i was up front getting very wet. I was really getting into the sailing when BOOM there was a huge sound as if we had run over something and all the crew members looked round at each other nevously. the main sail was swiftly lowered and the boat was checked out, what had actually happened was that the 2 supporting rods of the main mast below deck snapped in half. that was the end of our sailing experience. it was decided that the seas were too rough to venture anywhere other than one of the closest bays, which was a shame as the closest bay was certainly not the best of the whitsunday islands. the boat was anchored and we made our way in groups to the island via a motorised dingy.
Enjoyed lunch on the beach under a little sun as the clouds had broken. too many marsh flies trying to eat us alive though, i danced like a fool trying to lose one. The marsh flies are like our flies except they are on super steroids and bite, much bigger.
while we were standing around w huge lizard, similar to a komodo dragon came running out of the undergrowth, this thing was black in colour and was round 5 to 6 ft long. it was quite ironic how all the people who were petrified by a grass hopper, admitably a rather large grasshopper were perfectly fine to chase after this thing for a photo, when clearly this was quite a dangerous animal with an aggressive nature and very sharp and manky teeth, we were told that if they do bite you the would is almost certain to go septic as the have souch manky mouths.
we took the dingy back i was asked to keep the boat straight for a while while he sorted out some rope at the front, unfortunatley i got sidetracked talking, we started to head back to the beach.
Off we went back to long island using just the motor and the front sail.
back on the island i dicided to get myself a pizza and skipp the prepared diner, sorry aisha. As night fell the skys were littered by hundreds of huge bats all with a wingspan of around 2 ft. then back to the bar, another live act done some awesome pearl jam covers, i got drunk.
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