Hi there,<BR>I had the wonderful idea (seems like a bad one now) that I would use the 3-4 days still free on our itinerary to book us a charter in the Whitsundays - and keep it as a surprise for my husband-to-be. I'm in the early stages of inquiry with a couple of charter companies (RentaYacht, Queensland Yacht Company), but my question relates more to getting there, if this is to be feasible at all. <BR><BR>We have a flight booked from Brisbane to Cairns with VirginBlue for April 13. It's the next 4 days (Mon-Thurs) which are free, but we have to get back to Cairns by Thurs night for a Palm Cove hotel reservation.<BR><BR>The Brisbane-Cairns flight can be changed, but there don't seem to be any Virginblue stops close enough to Whitsundays. What is our best option for getting back to the Whitsundays from Cairns, or should we try to manager Brisbane-Whitsundays-Cairns? Flying to Mackay or Townsville and then getting to Airlie Beach would lose us too much time, we need to do this as directly as possible.<BR><BR>I've priced Cairns-Hamilton (we can pick up yacht there) with Qantas, but it's pretty pricey - AU$1000 return for both of us.<BR><BR>Are there any other options I'm missing? Are we mad to consider backtracking down the coast to the Whitsundays?<BR><BR>Anna

We chartered a boat in the Whitsundays for a week and had a grand time. I would definitely consider it a worthwhile thing to do. Its true that the flight from Cairns to Hamilton is expensive, but it will save you an awful lot of time, both in travel to/from the islands, as well as in the islands themselves (Hamilton is more central than Airlie Beach). One question I would have though, is how will you provision your yacht? It is easy to shop in a big grocery store in Airlie Beach, but grocery selection is much more limited on Hamilton. There is a grocery store, but it is small.

We chartered a boat in the Whitsundays for a week and had a grand time. I would definitely consider it a worthwhile thing to do. Its true that the flight from Cairns to Hamilton is expensive, but it will save you an awful lot of time, both in travel to/from the islands, as well as in the islands themselves (Hamilton is more central than Airlie Beach). One question I would have though, is how will you provision your yacht? It is easy to shop in a big grocery store in Airlie Beach, but grocery selection is much more limited on Hamilton. There is a grocery store, but it is small.

Probably the best way and the cheapest way would be to fly to Townsville and get a smaller Qantas owned flight from Townsville to Prosepine which is only a 20 minute bus drive or Taxi ride to Airlie beach. Unfortunately the smaller airlines do not have a web site that I know of - it would probably be Sunstate or something like that - and so you cannot find out what the prices are on line. You could email an Australian Travel Agent who could give you the prices ( and it won't be $1,000). Anyway that is the way I would go OR back to Mackay and up to the Whitsundays from there which only takes 1.5hours by road. AT this stage I would be changing my Virgin Blue flight and flying into Mackay only and going to Hamilton from there. I &quot;think&quot; that Virgin fly into Mackay but if not you could always use your credit from Virgin to get you back to Cairns and take Qantas which will get you to where you want to go - they fly into Hamilton. Virgin have limited destinations. If you look at a map you will see that the fairly major towns up the coast are Mackay (Hamilton Island) Prosepine, Townsville, Cairns with some smaller one in between. Hovever my first talk would be with Virgin and see what they can do because its easier to just stop en route to Cairns than to double back.

PS <BR>I have a feeling that PETE is a pilot and writes on this forum - you could ask him who goes where and where you could change things - I most certainly would try and go for the Whitsundays because its a beautiful part of the world.

Its me again. I just checked on the Virgin site and they do fly into the Whitsunday Coast ( not sure what airport that would be but it wouldn't be far for you) Therefore your cheapest option and easiest would be to change your flight to Cairns with them and fly into the Whitsundays then get a flight up to Cairns later on. They may be able to arrange some sort of stopover thing for not too much money.

Thanks everyone.<BR><BR>And thanks Liz, I didn't see that Virgin flew to Whitsunday Coast, I'll go back and check this out as it would be perfect.<BR><BR>Anna

Thanks everyone.<BR><BR>Liz, I didn't see that Virgin flew to Whitsunday Coast, so I just checked this out as it would be perfect. Unfortunately they don't fly from Brisbane, just from Sydney and further south. Am now looking at changing Virgin tickets to Mackay, they seem to have a fairly painless bus transfer the rest of the way.<BR><BR>Anna<BR><BR>

Hi ALF,<BR>Thanks for the tip, it's nice to hear from someone who's done a charter. We'll probably use Whitsunday Provisioning for food, they do supply to Hamilton at an extra charge, but we may end up departing from Airlie now.<BR><BR>Were you experienced sailors, or novices like us? I've been on one professionally crewed trip, but never on our own.<BR><BR>Anna

My wife and I are fairly experienced sailors, BUT the other couple who went with us were quite insistent that we get a motor yacht - so that is what we did; a 44-foot Grand Banks-style trawler, from Whitsunday Escape, Airlie Beach. It was fine, and certainly far more roomy than a sailboat of equivalent length. Still, I sure wish we would have had a sailboat - the wind blew steadily most of the day, and settled down most evenings, all navigation is line-of-sight, and there aren't too many hazards along the way.<BR><BR>If you SCUBA, I'd recommend renting a set, because there are a couple of good diving locations. We also saved a sailor's butt - his anchor rode got wrapped around a 'bommie' (coral head), and his bow was submerging as the tide rose. I used up one of my air tanks unwrapping his chain, but he would have been in deep sh*t without us.