Whitsundays Yacht Charters - Anyone been?
Submitted by SHizz on Sun, 2011-03-06 12:18
A group of friends have suggested a mid year trip to the Whitsundays, hire a wind powered 40 foot yacht(cat) and cruise around for a week. Bit of swimming, fishing and good times.
Anyone done this before? Comments/Suggestions?
iana
Posts: 652
Date Joined: 21/09/09
You need a competant skipper
Yes done that, ended up on a reef, fired the skipper! the skipper needs to be experienced. There are also very strong blows that come down the valleys of the islands, can give you a nasty fright.
At least a mono hull is self righting. Read once about sailing cats, when should you reef the sails? about ten minutes ago! remember that.
crano
Posts: 695
Date Joined: 04/11/09
been there done that
Hired a 40 foot power cat with 4 of us on board for a week 4 years ago.Great fun in spite of 20-25 kn south easterly every day.They dont mention this in the brochure but it blows like this most of the year.With all the sailing boats there hardly any had their sails up,they just went on the motor all the time.
If a boat is advertised as a 10 person go with 6 at the most unless you are all 4 foot tall.
The best water for snorkelling is at the Hayman Island end,the water was mud up near Hamilton.
We dragged a couple of lures around for the week but never had a touch.
Most of the boats do not have a GPS so taking a hand held is a good idea.
We had $250 worth of food and $600 worth of grog so we had a great time anyway.
postie80401
Posts: 2
Date Joined: 27/06/10
great trip
hi we went to whitsundays in october a few years ago and had a fantastic time
hired a motor boat catamaran it was easy to handle great snorkeling great weather
not much fishing didnt try a lot more fun swimming with them
i would reccomend this to anyone
a little bit of common sense is needed to read the charts but no big problem
need to watch the weather reports to decide where to anchor for the night but usually calm