2023 Alaska, Asia, Australia, Arabian Peninsula Trip
Day 75/105 - Airlie Beach / Whitsunday Islands, Australia
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| Last night's moon was gorgeous so I decided to start today's blog with it |
Today, we are dynamically positioning off of Airlie Beach, Australia. Dynamic positioning is the modern equivalent of dropping anchor. Basically, the captain pushes a button and the ship's propulsion systems maintain the ship's position based on GPS. It's pretty slick as thrusters turn on and off, keeping the ship in position and facing the desired direction.
Our tour today was Sailing the Whitsundays - a two-hour tour fully circumnavigating the largest island in the group, Whitsunday Island. If you didn’t catch the posting title, today’s location is slightly ironic. On Sunday, we were on Thursday Island. Now, today, Thursday, we are visiting the Whitsunday Islands. Oh, those Aussies and their clever names.
The islands are located off Australia's northeast coast, approximately in the red box.
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| Here is the detail of the area - we were holding just north of Airlie Beach |
Normally, you have to take a tender in and pick up your excursion. That was true for most excursions today, but not ours. Our excursion left directly from the ship.
Passengers are loaded onto the tour catamaran right from the tender loading area. That was nice and convenient. We were excited to see this ship as it has terrific top seating offering terrific views.
Unfortunately, that was not our ship. This was.
There was no seating up top. Everything was a restricted view seat, so we lost out on that. We loaded up and took off.
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| Tenders started making the run to Airlie Beach |
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| Our Viking Orion, shrinking as we sail away |
The Whitsunday Islands are quite pretty with beautiful variations in the color of the water, from blue to blue-green, to bright, almost Caribbean blue-green. Here are some of the views.
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| We passed many smaller islands |
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| Water went from smooth to choppy and back depending on the depth and wind direction |
This is the beginning of Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island. This pristine 7km white sand beach is stunning. The sand is actually 98% pure tiny silica beads. This makes the beach feel quite luxuriously fine and look brilliantly white. Silica also doesn’t retain heat well, so the beach never gets hot under your feet.
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| That color! |
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| This looked like a face to me |
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| We passed a flight of what I think are terns, grabbing fish from the water |
Overall, the trip was enjoyable. We wish the view was better from the boat, and that the included narration was intelligible. The speakers were terrible and not aimed where passengers were sitting, so much of the narration was lost to the wind or other passengers talking.
The worst part was our return to the Orion. When we got back, another tour boat was tied up, unloading one tour and loading the next. When they untied, a ship’s tender tied up and unloaded and loaded. When they untied, another tender tied up. Finally, after sitting just off the ship for more than 45 minutes, we were allowed to tie up and hop over to Orion. Just another example of how poorly the tours have been organized on this sailing.
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| Please let us off! |
While we were waiting to get off the tour boat, we hit 11:53 a.m. So what, you say? Well, today, in this geography, and precisely 11:53 a.m., the sun was exactly overhead. At this precise time, you do not cast a shadow anywhere but directly under you.
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| OK, it’s not that exciting, but it was something to do while we were waiting to tie up to Orion |
Back on Orion, we grabbed lunch and thought about taking a tender into Airlie Beach. We talked with some passengers that did and they said that as predicted, the seas were getting rougher. The ride in was fine, but the ride back involved a lot of tossing about. We decided to just call it a day and relax on the ship for the afternoon. After watching a tender return to the ship, I think we made a good call.
As we watched the operations this afternoon, another tour boat was held in limbo for more than 30 minutes, waiting for a tour boat and then a tender to unload and reload. The schedule for today was certainly not well thought out.
We checked on the tour boat unloading and at one point, there was a tour boat tied up to Orion, two tour boats, and two tenders waiting to tie up. Poor planning ruled the day today.
As we watched the logistics nightmare below us, we couldn’t help but notice the odd brown haze that was hanging in the air. It actually was quite beautiful, but we couldn’t identify where it came from. We saw no source, like a fire or such. So we have no idea where it came from or what it was.
There wasn’t much of a sunset tonight as the sun ducked behind clouds and then the hills.
All this happened as we sailed a bit late. Rumor has it that there was a little trouble loading one of our tenders. They got it all worked out and we were on our way. Tomorrow is a sea day before we anchor off Mooloolaba, Australia on Saturday, near Brisbane. Aussie friends helped me out with this port name. As I looked at it, Mooloolaba seemed like it should be MOO loo lah bah. Nope! They corrected me and said it is properly pronounced as moo LOO lah bah. Anyway, we’ll be there on Saturday.
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