We drove northeast to Airlie Beach, the port o’ call for pretty much every boat having anything to do with the Whitsundays. This was definitely a gamble because while most people book their Whitsunday boat trips weeks or even months in advance, we were seeing how well we could do with about a 48 hr window to get on a boat. As we did research online, the situation looked pretty bleak – 95% of the boat listings we saw were either booked up or way out of our price range. The rest just looked like potential human trafficking operations. We decided to leave it up to chance and walk the streets of Airlie in search of last minute deals. After only five minutes of walking we stumbled upon five available spots aboard the Samurai, a retired racing yacht that provided snorkels, dive equipment, and 3 days and 2 nights tooling around the Whitsundays. The spots had just opened up from a recent cancellation, and were being offered at about half the price of a usual ticket. After doing a little celebratory dance, we signed up and paid our deposits for the tickets.