Whitsundays June-July 2026

Read Time:5 Minute, 33 Second

Day 1 Saturday 27 June 2026
First night in Airlie Beach at the ruff n ready Airlie Beach hotel which actually had a mega comfortable bed which resulted in a surprisingly good night’s sleep.

Day 2 28 June 2026
We mooched around Airlie Beach, glaring at the bad weather, while we waited for 1pm to start our provisioning shop at Woolies, before getting on the boat at 4pm to spend the night in the marina. We had dinner at a nearby bistro, and had a comfortable night’s sleep.

Day 2 monday 29 June 2026
Airlie Beach-Stonehaven
We had our briefing which started at 8am took 4+ hours. We then set off across the water towards our planned overnight at Stonehaven anchorage on a mooring line. This turned out to be in a howling gale (not actually a gale) but a wild night with the boat swinging around on and the buoy whacking into the hull with great energy accompanied but wild squalls of wind and rain. Despite this, we all slept quite well.

Day 3 Tuesday 30 June
Stonehaven-Blue Pearl Bay—Butterfly Bay
As I mentioned, despite the banging buoy, and the very gusty wind, we all reported getting a good night’s sleep. We motored over to Blue pearl bay for a great snorkelling, where I saw an actively feeding Blue spotted ray, a nudi that I haven’t seen before and plenty of the usual interesting fishies. We had swum over from the boat which was fun.

I was super keen to do some actual sailing so we motored out into the open water and got the sails up, it was so nice to turn the engines off and move along at 3-4knots under the power if the wind. I had turned the boat around and we were moving more and more out of the lee of Hayman Island, with the effect that most on board were turning more and more green sue to the wind driven swell. Ao we decidedto canthe sailing and head straight to Butterfly bay under motor to grab a mooring and settle in for the night.

Once we had moored up we noticed a big fin pop out of the water close to shore! Yikes what is that, at the same time a you g girl was getting onto a paddle board off the back of one of the other moored boats, omg is she heading for doom, are we about to witness something awful!?! Oh, its actually a Manta Ray! Adam took the kayak, Fran took the paddle board and i took Ab on the tender to see if we could see it closely. Adam and Fran had the experience of seeing it right under their craft, whil Ab and I also saw it a very close quarters. It was humous, I’d say a minimum wing span of 2-2.5m.

After that excitement we relaxed on the boat for the rest of the afternoon. Elley and Corban cooked up a lovely pineapple chicken meal for us all, washed down with a few tasy mid strength beers. Very civilised.

Wednesday 1 July
Butterfly bay-Tongue bay- Chalkies-Whitehaven

Very rough around the top, some chundering over the side, then a change of plan due to the rain squalls, so instead if hitting Whitehaven Beach and the returning to Tongue bay, it was decided that we would do it the other way around. We then slowly steamed from Tongue to chalkies with the intent of arriving at 2pm, but all of the moorings were full and it didn’t look like anyone was planning to move, so we headed back over to whitehaven and anchored there in close proximity to other boats for the night. We had to move as we where too shallow, we found a more suitable spot in 5-6m of water. This was fine but then another cumberland monohull turned up and anchored very close up wind to us. I was concerned that we would have difficulty getting our anchor up in the morning as they would have been floating over the top of it. In the end they ledt early so it wasn’t a problem. Fran made a very tasty mexican style meal for Fran and Kev’s cooking night. This was very popular amongst the crew.

Thursday 2 July
Whitehaven all day for a second night cos it was so good.

It turns out that the snorkelling just off the point is sensational, I saw a massive cow tail ray just sitting under a thin layer of sand in about 2m of water. I only saw it because i initially thought the tail was a palm frond, I was mildly startled when i realised the frond was connected to a large creature.

Friday 3 July
Whitehaven - through Solway passage- Fitzalan Passage- across Whitsunday passage under sail to South Molle Island mooring.

Solway Passage was very calm, Fitzalan calm and very narrow. Sailing across the Whitsunday passage was great, but too slow at 3-4knots so I fired up the engines for the last quarter.

We arrived quite late, after a very slick mooring we tendered over to the island and walked up to the first view point. I have to admit that I found it quite hard going getting up the hill but to be fair I did have a back pack with my camera gear in it.

Ab cooked an awesome butter chicken for us, after her very tasty spaghetti bolle penne on Thursday night.

Saturday 4 July
South Molle - Airlie Beach Disembarkation day.
Frev got up at around 630 for the normal morning routine before packing up and getting on our way. Fran took the helm for the trip back and very expertly steered us into the harbour at Airlie Marina where our docker was waiting for us. She did this with other boats heading out through the narrow passageway and with the other charter boats following close behind.

There was a minor fuel spill incident caused by a split fuel pump line but thankfully that was not our responsibility. Most of the fuel stayed on board and could be mopped up.

We caught a maxi taxi back to the Airlie Beach hotel, offloaded our luggage, and then went and had lunch while waiting for our room to be ready. Frev spent most of the afternoon lying on the grass reading and snoozing at the waterfront park.

We watched the AB’s just beat France at the new Christchurch stadium, and then went all had dinner at the same Italian restaurant again!

What a great trip this has been!