It was an early morning without the best sleep last night. Linda and I stopped at the bakery to get some bread for breakfast while a few others stopped at McDonald's. We all met at the tourist info where we were able to store our extra bags free while gone. We had to be at the harbour by 7:45 and the guy at the info said we would be late so we hurried down there and waited till 8am anyway before we saw anyone. Before we boarded we all had to pay a marine park tax of $30 and another $1 for ice (I'm still confused bout this one). We finally boarded about 9am for an 8:30 departure. Once on board we had to pay another $15 for stinger suit hire, its better than dying I guess. We finally departed about 9:30. Our captain is Shane, Skipper James, deckhand Tony, and cook Liz. It was sunny when we left the harbour but got cloudy as we went along. The winds were pretty strong and the waves were huge! Most of us sat outside on the front of the boat where we got soaked from the waves. It rained a little bit too but it didn't matter since we were wet anyway. We stopped near an island where the water was calm so those who wanted a tube ride got their chance. We had our choice of a tube ride or a 10-minute intro dive. It was a hard choice but I chose the dive since I have my choice of 15,000 lakes to go tubing on when I eventually come home. Second best to getting in the tube was being the spotter. I got to sit in the boat with the captain and cruise around hoping to see someone fly off the tube. It rained some while we were tubing, but don't worry, I managed not to melt. We had lunch on the boat and then hung around for a while waiting for the seas to calm so we could get to Hook Island were our accommodations were. We waited for a good hour or so and then proceeded, the waves were even bigger than this morning and we all had a good time getting nice and wet. Once we reached the island we took the little boat across to the jetty and underwater observatory. There is no dock for the boat so we will be using the smaller boat (fits about 8 people) to go back and forth from the island to the boat. It was of course raining so we had a lovely 10-minute bush walk to the resort. The term resort should be used loosely...it was a backpackers. We all got our rooms. The 9 of us were in the same room and a Canadian girl joined us. The rooms weren't fancy- just 5 sets of bunk beds. We had to go back to the boat for dinner in just over an hour so it didn't pay to dry off, most of us got in the pool. After dinner on the boat, we played a few games that were heaps of fun. We headed back to the island about 10:30. There are a wide variety of people on the excursion. There were 38 of us. There were only 3 of us from the States (the other 2 were from Wisconsin), Germans, Middle easterners (Israel and not sure where else), English, Italians, Danish and Canadians. It was fun talking to everyone to hear their stories of why they were in Australia and their journeys so far.