Airlie Beach, Whitsunday Islands, Australia

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This tender port was Clay's gateway to the Great Barrier Reef. I guess it was most everyone's who wanted to visit since the ship's excursion from Cairns was canceled before the ship sailed. So I think we arrived and anchored a little early. Clay was supposed to be in Sirena Lounge at 6:55am but I watched him load his catamaran between 7:15 and 7:25am. They left Sirena about 7:25am. Clay enjoyed his time but said I made the right choice as they had a really rough couple of hours with deckhands handling barf bags. He said it was rougher and a longer ride than the Puffin island boat ride in Newfoundland.. That just about did me in, so I know I made the right choice not going. Clay didn't like the ride much but he did like the visit to the Great Barrier Reef. He saw lots of coral and fish and 2 green sea turtles.

I had breakfast at Terrace and then took my 4 tokens and a big sack of dirty laundry to the sole guest laundry onboard. Fortunately it is not that far away on the port side of my deck 7. It was a zoo when I checked before breakfast. It was busy when I went after breakfast but I walked right in and found more than 2 of the 6 washing machines empty. Since washes took 20+ minutes and dryers took 40+ minutes there was a lot of shuffling and negotiating. The main problem though was a shortage of tokens! I watched someone from Reception come and collect tokens from all 12 machines 4 times while I was in there. Each time they had them sold before they got back downstairs. Now they limit tokens to 2 per person per request if not per day. They claimed they had 500 tokens at the beginning of the cruise and sold them in any quantity on demand, but they have not been used since then and now they don't have any to sell. Weird. Anyway, it kept usage limited! The room was a bustling hive of activity but most of the machines were not in use because people couldn't get tokens. I was happy Clay and I had gotten our allotment a couple of days ago!

I went ashore between roughly 10:30am and 11:45am. I just went ashore and came back. I was there! It took 30 minutes to tender each way and I had about 10 minutes to go ashore and come back to the tender. They had a nice little cruise terminal with a bunch of volunteers in there. One gave me a map and showed me where I had landed, how to walk along the waterfront 20 minutes or so to get to a markets area and a restaurant row. He also pointed out the shuttle bus sitting outside that was charging $5 pp each way for about a 5 minute ride instead. I didn't need to go shopping or to eat so I came back after I checked out the shop at the terminal.

It is a pretty island with blue waters. The cruise terminal seemed to be selling lots of sightseeing and Great Barrier Reef sailing excursions to people visiting this resort area. It was very hot and humid!

I had lunch in Terrace. Clay will be a bit sad he missed it. It was an Asian buffet with an entire roast suckling pig at the carving station.

Clay should be back by 3pm when we are scheduled to weigh anchor and sail. Tomorrow we are to be in Cairns from 10am to 9pm. We have scheduled a private excursion from 11:40am to 5pm so we hope we arrive on time!

I will assume a quiet rest of the day and evening and go ahead and post this now.

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