The Matador Sailing and Scuba Experience

POLITE NOTICE: Make a brew before you read this one…..its a long one!! Thank-you on behalf of Gartland Productions ha ha!

We boarded a slender white vessel, with it crisp white decks, and shimmering steel railings, told to remove our shoes, fill the “eski” (ice box) with all our beers and drinks, and shown to our sleeping quarters.

Uniformly we climbed down in to the belly of the yacht, low ceiling and tight corridor span most of the 85ft length of the boat, bunk beds clinged to the crisp white sides, doubles at the bottom and singles at the top, a small kitchen area with sink and ingredients stowed high and compact and two marine toilets at the back of the yacht was to be our home home for the next three days and two nights. We dumped our bags on a beds and climbed the step ladder back to the deck, where we were told that at 85 feet in length, Matador was the largest International Offshore Racing Maxi ever built. Matador was designed, developed and constructed at a cost of over US $20 million in 1991. The yacht is constructed from carbon fiber, titanium and aluminum and that this sailing vessel is SERIOUSLY FAST and we were gonna witness, and crew it…are these people mad! over shadowed by this information we were told about the rules on board, how to use toilets, marine law etc.

The engines started to hum and we were off, our voyage to the Whit Sundays had began carefully we made our way out of the harbor and into the open sea….first call for us to get involved in getting the boat sailing, with wind power alone…..8 people to the grinders, the skipper shouted, I was one of the people who volunteered, oh come on your on a sail trip you get involved…..after brief but in-depth instructions, all eight of us began to work to raise the main sail, engine stopped, it was high winds so we couldn’t put the sails up full, winding and grinding the main sail was raised, next came the front sail, more volunteers needed (I can’t remember the proper name for the front sail). A gust of wind and a fine catch and a bit of a by the skipper in the sail and a snap and we were sailing towards our first destination and our first scuba dive, skipper requested that someone with a i-pod put some music on, so why not indeed a bit of the Kooks, the Arctic Monkeys and Razorlight, played while we all got to know each other and sunbathed!

Soon our destination was on the horizon, instructions from the skipper to bring in the sails, more volunteers required, delayed a little and the places were filled…..grinders in position and in came the main sail, volunteers for the front sail, I stepped forward, now this had to be the funniest thing, we had to grab the sail and pull it down, wind flapping the sail me and two others launched ourselves at the sail, pulling and pulling…crickey it took a while and from no-where in jumped Jay, in a superman like flight he jumped and helped us bring it in….I was shattered by this point!! The crew got us anchored up at a sand bank in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by parts of the coral reef and we were told about the dive, aplit in to groups and what we where going to do by Scuba Dave.

Stinger suits, flippers and snorkel gear in hand, we got in the taxi , manned by Ferg and taken ashore. After the test of manhood, walking barefoot across broken coral, washed up by the constant lashing of the sea, we were on the beach, frisbees and footballs all you could want. I was in dive group two so had an hour to burn, so joined in on a little bit of snorkelling and the Darth Vader impressions, fishes of all shapes, sizes and looks swam aimlessly below us, the gentle under current allowed us to float on the cushioned sea whilst observing the world below. Time kinda flew and before I knew it it was my turn to scuba and join the universe below.

After short instruction and basics to scuba, we submerged unnaturally under the water, bubbles streaming past our ears as we breathed under water, we got gradually deeper amoungst the coral reefs below, some looked like trees dancing in a summer breeze, others looked like venus fly traps but with additional luminous colours, colours like electric blues, greens, purples, I would say breathe taking but you dare not, not breath under the water obviously….then came the parrot fish, with ther own set of unique colours, angel fish as big and looking like yellow rimmed dinner plates, Napoleon Wrasse (affectionately called Elvis by locals due to its apparent quiff) oggeling at you with their beady eyes, to fish that look like they have their fins on backwards and finally to the smaller ones. An abundance of colour! You look behind you and your swimming with a school of yellow tipped tuna, okay at this point I have to say, predatory fish like these fish….now that kind of made me nervous, but swim on I thought!

After an hour of scuba we surfaced, exhilarted but exhusted back to the sun soaked sand island, next group to go we decided to build sand sculptures (yes I know, but hey at least its not drinking) and messing with a frisbee and football, sounds like something out of baywatch, with me as the hoff but without the dodgy red shorts and freaky hair cut!! ha ha…that made you laugh didn’t my little blogites me being compared to the hoff when I am so much better looking and younger!! ha ha!! Maybe I shouldn’t have put that in, Quinny ammo that one!

Now as an aside here, I do hope you are still awake, I did say this would be a long one. You’ll be pleased to know that the first day is almost over and there are only three more days to write about, but I’ll spare you the little details…..maybe.

So we got our little taxi back to the Matador, to be welcomed by cups of tea and biscuits!! what a great end to a scuba session, but hold on it didn’t end there, we once more raised the sails and made haste to the evening stop over, a little bay used by boats in the event of a cyclone…was that going to happen, I hear you ask in bated breath…..well as it happens the heavens opened, sheets of rain bounced of the deck, in a mental scurry we put up our cover, falling over each other as the 30ft waves battered our boat, folk lightening lit up the sky and the silhouette of a of an island forgotten in the angry night sky……okay maybe not, the sea was still, but it did rain a little and we did have to put up the cover, this is going to shock you, but out came the beer….no the part of the beer you expect, but the fact that I did not consume any…okay now pick yourself of the floor, having fell to it in amazement, my nights beer was in fact litres of water, whilst the others slurred in a drunken mans, (oh sorry not very pc) a persons beer fest (that should do).

Worked out well, we were fed and watered, okay well watered and the family atmosphere really penetrated through, by the end of the night, everyone had swapped numbers, everyone knew everyone and all were suitably drunk, bar me of course as I was on water (just making that point well stated) and the drinking games began, went from kiss cards, when you get the card of the next person by sucking it off their lips (obviously dropping a few on purpose) and passing it to the next….oh before I go any further it was boy girl boy girl all the way around, I was of course tactically positioned between the better looking women ;O) To other rather unexplainable games….kind of made up as we went along….well the clock soon hit 2 and had to be up in 5hrs to start sailing to our next destination.

I’ll give you a break from this one…..and start another post soon….just so you can recover from the hilarity of me being compared to the hoff. ha ha.