The pace of life at the moment is totally fantastic and everyday brings new and exciting things to do, one huge fear however is that by the time I blink it’ll all be over and the contract will have drawn to a close. Every so often I have to pinch myself and take a step back to check it’s all happening for real.

Spent the last few days filming with the Getaway travel show which goes out nationally throughout Australia and hit the airwaves on Thursday 13th August – a great idea to compare the host, Natalie’s job and mine. Best Job v’s best job. I win of course!

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Headed out to gain my first sailing qualification on the ocean around the Whitsundays aboard the yacht ‘Another Fiasco’ with the help of Explore Whitsundays and had an amazing time with Matt the skipper and my crew of Nick, Anthony and Ian – it holds me in good stead for the upcoming Hamilton Island Race Week which takes place at the end of August and if the rumour is true I’ll be sailing on board ‘Wild Oats‘ – an incredible Maxi yacht which has won the Sydney – Hobart and is owned by Bob Oatley, the owner of Hamilton Island. Hold your breath Ben – this one’s going to be mental!

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We spent a few days on Hayman (yes the place whose name I spelt wrongly in my first week on the job and got crucified by the press!) relaxing in the sunshine, snorkeling, bush walking to try and find wallabies and enjoying the opulent hospitality there.

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Today and tomorrow are days off, well as close as I can get – only a huge website update for both here and islandreefjob.com, a couple of phone interviews and an 800 word piece for The Observer newspaper by Friday night. Headed to Airlie Beach on the mainland for another dentist appointment and I hope they’ve sorted it this time for good….

Over the weekend I head south on the Queenslander train service to Gladstone before relocating on Heron and Wilson Islands for some real bush camping in tents…..5 * tents of course – you can’t expect me to back to normal ones just yet can you!?!

The weather’s been blustery and warm, the tan is starting to feel right again after a few pasty months in the UK and the ocean is becoming more like a playground as I try loads of new things – jetskiing, sailing, diving at night, snorkeling in rip currents in front of the house etc!

I’ve picked up the pace of life and feel it all fits rather well – I could do this for a long time you know!

Only 5 months left and counting. Time to start looking at the next project and getting things under way for my circumnavigation of Australia departing in the early part of 2010. Any ideas of good endurance challenges people??

Sorry for the delay in getting anything new onto the site, I have set myself the task of writing some new script for you tomorrow morning, in the mean time have a look at our first scuba dive on the Great Barrier Reef when we descended to 10 metres to dive with some Potato Cod and Reef Sharks.

The first few weeks of the job have been excellent, really good fun, packed full of new challenges but pretty damn busy. Now that’s a good thing as anyone who knows me will realise…I don’t really like sitting still or wasting time – unlike the English cricket team in the first Ashes test!

As I sit here tonight on the sofa at home (watching the Ashes funnily enough) I’ve been thinking back about the days since I started the job in July 1st and will try and summarise the highs and lows of what’s been going on in my crazy world ever since.

Best beach: Whitehaven Beach – crystal clear water, THE finest white sands and its 7kms long.

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Best food: The accolade for this category must be split between two very different locations. I love my steak I really do, a fat rib-eye fillet, cooked rare makes me smile from ear to ear and that was my first night back in Australia at Jo-Jo’s in Brisbane. Presentation is SO much  as far as I’m concerned when it comes to good food and Glenn Bacon at Hayman really does make you feel at though you’re eating a work of art. Bre and I sat at his bench in the kitchen and were served an incredible range of delights….Squid Ink Emulsion, Ice Bowls, Foie Gras Jus – a tantilising menu of note.

Best bed: The Pavilion at Lizard Island resort for sure! From the goose down pillows to the mind blowing view there is only one real contender so far. I could have spent two weeks here and have never got bored…the review that Kate Hudson gave exactly the same room when she stayed there was “the most romantic place in the world” – and I can agree. There’s this incredible bed, the huge sliding windows which open out onto the veranda, the infinity plunge pool overlooking the ocean and Osprey Island and finally the double day bed a few feet down to watch the sunrise from. Yes you pay through the nose for somewhere like this but the experience is one I’ll never forget. Check out these photos…

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Its amazing how much today I take mobile phone reception for granted and when I loose it all normal functions, updates and blogging just disappear off the radar. It’s actually quite refreshing, life can continue without being tied to the keyboard and it gave me a chance to enjoy Lizard Island to the full. The downside though is this site has neither changed nor evolved in the last week and for this I can only apologise….so here I go!

After a few days on Hamilton Island and in the surrounding Whitsundays, Bre and I headed to Cairns and the north of Queensland. Its the furthest north we’ve both been so far on the trip and the change in temperature was really obvious as we left the plane and suddenly felt a rush of warm air as we left the plane, finally Bre may be warm enough in the evenings to not need to wrap up as though she’s at home in Canada!

I’d really looked forward to heading out to Lizard Island as so many people had recommended it, this is one of the Voyager resorts and by all accounts probably one of the most luxurious destinations we’ll visit during the next six months…plenty of real celebrities come here to get away from everything….people, internet, mobile phones – everything!

The flight we took on Hinterland Aviation over the outer ribbons of the Great Barrier Reef was awe-inspiring, we swept low over the coral cays with the deep aqua blues and sandy bottom really standing out, some of the little sandbanks are only exposed at low tide and you can really imagine parking off on one for lunch and a snooze, maybe sometime I’ll be able to do it but not this time. We made the final approach to Lizard and touched down on the runway, full of anticipation for the coming few days adventure….

Bliss, perfection and total utter spoiling…just some of the words which can only start to summarise what awaits you if you ever make it out to Lizard Island. This is one of those retreats that the rich and famous make it out to, its remote, there’s only ever 40 guests on the island at any one time and you feel like someone really special as the staff treat you with a very personalised touch, add to that the fact that it’s one of the most picturesque tropical islands I’ve been lucky enough to make it to and you’ll see why I’m pouring so much praise onto it.

There’s a wealth of things to do here, it not just the ‘sit on the beach and fry’ sort of retreat as there’s activities galore to experience; diving, snorkeling, sailing, dinghies for hire, bush walking etc. During our few days on Lizard we had a good go at most of them. The Cod Hole is a famous dive site on the GBR, famed for its huge Potato Cod which are so tame they actually accept food from the dive master and brush right past you in the process. As they power away from any threat the shockwave their acceleration creates can easily be felt through the water, my first ever experience of this which gives you an idea of their strength….don’t get in the way! I loved the dive here, the second of the day, which had given the tide a chance to drop offering some protection from the swell and surge of the outer ocean and allowing the clarity of the water to increase giving us amazing visibility of around 20 metres. We swam with Black Tip Reef Sharks, Trumpet Fish, Barracuda and Mackerel. The variety of corals here both soft and hard are very impressive – there’s other areas where I’ve snorkelled which maybe don’t quite come up to scratch with what I’d expected from the GBR but the Cod Hole truly delivers. Here’s a selection of images to try to highlight this, apologies for the lack of colour in these images – I only received the camera just before heading underwater and hadn’t changed any of the settings to suit the marine environment. Will do better in the future….

This post was written nearly a week ago and I’ve just found it in my drafts….sorry for the delay in getting anything up here for you to read. There is very little I can do when the islands I visit have no phone reception or internet connections. Typing the next post right now.

This is just amazing, the experiences that Bre and I have had over the last two days really would have normally filled a month of my life or even a year and I feel extremely honored to be in this position and can’t wait for the next few days, weeks and months.

Since leaving the city of Brisbane and finally arriving at my island paradise last Wednesday afternoon the dream just hasn’t stopped happening. Bre and I made our way into the Blue Pearl, our house for the next six months, and slowly unpacked trying in some way to fill the gaping spaces with some of our own clothes and things from home to add a little more of a lived-in feel to the villa.

The view from the balcony is the most amazing feature of the house with far reaching views out over the Coral Sea and to the east where the sun rises out of the ocean every morning, this will be the perfect place to use a telescope which is now number one on my list of things to buy!

Since then we’ve headed to the marina via the golf buggy to catch the Voyager launch out to Whitehaven beach which is one of the most beautiful beaches imaginable; crystal clear blue water, white silica sand and a perfect blue skies can make you definitely understand why this has been voted Queensland number one beach location. Nah Judd from Queensland Parks and Wildlife gave the two of us a very informative briefing all about the sand, the beach and even let us into a little secret about some of its incredible properties…you can use this stuff to clean silver jewellery  as its very fine and therefore slightly abrasive.

As Bre and I were mucking around and splashing in the water one of the film crews asked her if she’d do a couple of cartwheels and flips for them, now Bre being the girl she is couldn’t say no. We ran towards the camera together with Bre twirling away beside me and just as she landed the final turn, came down hard on her heels with the angle of the beach turning her off balance. The end result was a hobble, a look of embarrassment and a need to sit down and assess the damage. Yikes that wasn’t supposed to happen.

The sound of the seaplane overhead signaled our departure but my poor girl was in pain so I carried her to the plane ‘fireman style’ and placed her delicately into her seat – the first time we’d flown in a small plane together.

Our flight to Hayman was over far too quickly, we’d passed over some stunning locations and I almost felt a little jealous of the yachts and launches moored below in the blue waters and I imagined the owners and crews leisurely swimming and snorkelling…oh Ben your time will come! This is going to be a really busy, hectic schedule but one to savour and enjoy…

Its been a total whirlwind since arriving here on Hamilton Island and when I get a chance I’ll finally write some script for here, in the meantime here’s another short video! {seesmic_video:{“url_thumbnail”:{“value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/BKcG5YiGFO_th1.jpg”}”title”:{“value”:”When I get a second I promise I’ll write more!!! ”}”videoUri”:{“value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/Qtnpgn3Ctq”}}}

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Its sort of two-fold this post…

1. The Best Job in the World campaign has be beaten by none less than Barrack Obama’s presidential campaign in the race for the Titanium Lion at the Cannes Advertising Festival. Oh well, probably a little more budget there I imagine. Read more here

2. The British and Irish Lions were beaten 28 -25 by the South Africans in what will go down as a simply spectacular game of rugby. With one game to play in the three game series the Saffers have already secured a series win leading 2 – 0. Oh how that hurts…to find out the painful truth read more here

It’s not always good to be the Lion you know

Deep breath Ben…here we go, the start of the adventure that is the The Best Job in the World.

I left Hampshire behind with the thunderous skies dumping untold amounts of rain onto us as we loaded Dad’s car with my bags and hit the road ready to take on the traffic of the M25 for the last time this year, oh what a pleasure!

Matt and the crew from Beyond TV were there to meet me at the terminal, filmed my final farewells to Mum and Dad and after checking my extremely weighty bags (somewhere near 55kgs, yikes) I headed through passport control and towards the Singapore Airlines lounge.

Just after the scheduled departure time our Airbus A380 gracefully lifted its bulk from the wet runway and we were off, up into the heavy skies until we finally broke through into the big blue beyond. The first leg from London to Singapore went really quickly, 12 hours taken up by an almost constant stream of food and films, until the announcement came to fasten up for the last time (it had been one of the most turbulent flights I’d been on with probably ten different seatbelt warnings) and we dropped towards the runway below.

Singapore airport is awesome, a huge range of shops and stores to tempt even the tightest traveller and the temptation was too much at the iStore as I swiped the plastic for a couple of little essentials…they are essential Mum ok!

The second leg of the flight to Brisbane was a chance to finally get some sleep after deciding to stay up for the first part and I nestled into the corner of my chair with a full stomach and tired mind and passed out….right up until there was only an hour to go, perfect – that’s the way to fly.

Bruce Wallace from TQ and his daughter were there to meet me at the airport along with the Australian side of Beyond TV. They’d done a great job of keeping my arrival out of the public domain and it was a welcome relief to not have journo’s there for once thrusting their mikes in my face. I just hope it’s the same when Bre gets here on Tuesday, although judging by the fact that they’ve called her poor Grandma in Vancouver for information I doubt it.

We headed into the central business district and to the Sofitel hotel where I’ll be spending the next few days until Bre and I finally head out to the Blue Pearl next week. My amazing room up on level 24 will be the perfect retreat every evening.

I felt wide awake as I sat waiting for the rugby to start and almost wished I fallen asleep before it started…the British Lions were playing South Africa in the second test from Pretoria. Tell me how you can let such dominance at half time turn into a loss by the end of  the game? It ended up with a loss for the Lions both in the game and now the series as the South Africans lead 2-0 with one to play.

Just the Ashes to look forward to then……hmmmm.

Welcome to my blog if you’re visiting for the first time from Nuffnang. You’re probably here because we’ve dangled a lucrative carrot in front of you offering a $5000 dream holiday to Queensland and now you want to find out more.

**If you’re here as a regular visitor and have no idea what I’m talking about, then head over to the Nuffnang website.

What’s the deal you ask? Well the deal is this. Last year Tourism Queensland launched a new campaign called Vitamin Me. No idea what this is?

Well it can be found in all forms, but is best attained by experiencing exciting adventures, soaking up some arts and culture, consuming delicious food and wine, or enjoying some beautiful scenery and wildlife. Not surprisingly, the richest sources are found in Queensland.

All you have to do is compose a post on your blog explaining how you would boost your Vitamin Me levels if you won a $5,000 dream holiday to Queensland.

The competition opens today (24 January) and runs until 3pm (AEST) 10 February 2012, so get your posts in quick on the Nuffnang competition entry page.

Check out my video below to get inspired. And remember that we’re looking for originality and creativity, in the form of photos, video or words (however your blog readers prefer).

Happy blogging!

Back in August during the Best Expedition in the World the team from Underwater Earth and I headed out with one of Australia’s best dive operators, Pro Dive Cairns, for a live-aboard experience.

I had visions of cramped quarters, ships tack and over-visited dive sites prior to leaving having had that experience in other parts of the world. But after three days living, sleeping, eating and diving with 20 other people I have to say it was simply ‘bloody brilliant’!

Our skipper Warren took us out to some of the best coral reefs I’ve seen. Visibility was excellent, the marine life abundant and the coral was bright, colourful and extensive. Over the three days we visited numerous dive sites, had close encounters with turtles, sharks and bump-headed Parrotfish and went home smiling.

If you want a real Great Barrier Reef experience and love your diving then do yourself a favour, book a place, grab a camera and prepare to be blown away by this adventure.

Richard, Christophe and I were there to film as much of the underwater world as we could. I wanted to produce a YouTube movie about life on a single reef. What would we find? Would there be enough to create an exciting piece? What would turn up to the party?

Here’s the results of a single day filmed at Flynn Reef just off Cairns:

To find out more about this region of the Great Barrier Reef visit here

To read the blog post I wrote about Bump-Headed Parrotfish (possibly the ugliest fish in the world?) click here or to see the photo album from the trip click here

Pro Dive are a PADI 5-Star dive training school operating out of Cairns. Visit their website here

Personally it’d be a crime if the Great Barrier Reef wasn’t one of the Natural 7 Wonders of the World…but then I am a little biased of course!

On November 11th public voting closes to decide the New 7 Wonders of the World from 28 finalists. Australia has two of them, Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef.

There are some incredible places that we’re up against including Table Mountain, The Amazon and the Maldives. All of which are pretty special places to visit and will get masses of support from voters…but we need your help to keep the Great Barrier Reef in the top rank.

To show how important every vote is, this week I headed out to Vlasoff Cay on the Great Barrier Reef with a polling booth, seven snorkellers, Tourism Australia and a film crew…to set up what could be the most remote polling station in the world!

Andrew Ridley, the co-founder of Earth Hour was there too. His work literally plunges the planet into darkness for one hour every March as companies and individuals turn off all their lights to to take a stand against climate change. As one of the Reef’s Ambassador’s his vote is well and truly behind the reef.

We got great coverage from the Australian media with channel 7,9 and 10 all running news pieces about the stunt. This morning I had to don my indigenously-painted wetsuit for a live cross to the Channel Ten news room in Sydney…all in the name of promotion of course!

So how can you help?

In order to cast your vote visit the New 7 Wonders of the World website by clicking here, choose your top seven (making sure the GBR is one of them) or alternatively you can visit their Facebook page and cast your vote here

As I draft this and continue to move north along the Queensland coast, I have reflected on the minor speed bump the expedition experienced during the past two weeks. While it has been a challenging time the light is glaring at me very brightly from the end of the tunnel – we’re back on the water and picking up the pace!

Since Sunshine took a battering from some wild weather during our stay at Lady Eliot Island, I have been working furiously to get the Best Expedition in the World back on track.

The BIG4 Cane Village here in Bundaberg has been our home for the last fortnight and I have to say a massive thank you to John and the team here for looking after us. The guys at the Bundaberg Slipway have become our co-workers and friends and yacht Sunshine is almost ready to become Operation HQ once again from where I’ll report as often as I can to bring you a snapshot of life on the Great Barrier Reef.

Since then I’ve been up to Heron Island and shot some incredible images with the crew from Underwater Earth, interviewed some of the great scientific minds working at the research station, been interviewed by radio and television stations from around the world and tried to keep fit by running the streets here.

Mum and Dad have continued their Queensland Road Trip along the coast and have been furiously blogging to bring you their story of life on the road as they explore the state in their Apollo Motorhome and document here on the blog.

Finally the Yellowbrick tracker will be moving in the right direction (north) and as we take photos, post videos and create blogs they’ll appear on the track exactly where they were taken – keep watching this page for the latest updates.

Being able to get back onto the kayak is something I’ve been itching to do and once we make up some of the lost ground I’ll be cutting my paddle through the waves hopefully alongside the migrating Humpback Whales that have already started to appear along the Queensland coast.

So my sincere apologies for a temporary break in transmission…rest assured we are eager to go and working twice as hard to create a wake and bring to life more reef adventures to inspire you all!!

Yours Expeditionally

Ben

Breathe in, breathe out, and exert a massive, “Pheeeew!” I’ve finally made it to 1770 – the launchpad for the Best Expedition in the World!!!

It’s merely a cricket’s lifetime away now. Next Saturday, while the Captain Cook Festival is in full swing, the crew and I will be kicking-starting our epic voyage of discovery. We can hardly wait!

But, I don’t want to get too ahead of myself. I might have escaped my CBD office, but there’s still a bit to get through while I’m ‘waiting in the stalls’.

International and domestic media are travelling to 1770 over the coming days to investigate, write up, and film Best Expedition related stories.

The similarities between Captain Cook and myself have been particularly enticing for the media. Click here to read the Courier Mail article.

Not only will I be following Cook’s route up the Queensland coast, I’m just as much of an adventure-hungry Pom as he was! I just happened to swap his HMB Endeavour for a state of the art Hobie Kayak, and his telescope for an ocean of modern marine technology.

Just to make sure I can pull this 21st Century challenge off, I’ll be doing some serious Hobie and ‘tech training’ this week. I want to make sure I know what I’m doing and have contingencies in place before I hit the open water.

I’m fairly sure I’ve packed everything the crew and I will need (and stuff we really don’t need). Solar showers, board games, expedition mascots, DVDs, Saya skincare, laptops, 4-months worth of clothing and enough dive gear to sink a ship – I’ve brought the lot…and then some. This is not back packing, this is not flash packing, this is the Best Expedition in the World!

Fingers crossed, everything will fit on the Sunsail support vessel, “Sunshine “, which is currently passing Yeppoon and on it’s way south. I visited Sunshine in the Whitsundays several days ago and kitted her out with a complex interweb of technology – slightly overwhelming stuff, but vital in order for me to run bestexpeditionintheworld.com from the middle of the Great Barrier Reef.

Mum and Dad have also been learning how to master new media technologies. They arrived in Brisbane last week to kick off their ‘Queensland Road Trip‘, which they have started photo-documenting and blogging about on the Best Expedition website. These ‘Grey Nomads’ will undoubtedly get up to some serious fun and mischief over the next few months. I look forward to catching up with them at different points along the coast and hearing ALL of the goss.

Between catch up points, my folks will be able to follow my progress (from May 21st) by taking the odd peak at the live tracking page of this website, courtesy of Yellowbrick. It will update my position every 15 minutes on a Google Map, and feature photo videos, photos, 360° panoramas, and blogs in exactly the same place they were created. Check it out here and join me on the adventure of a lifetime – the Best Expedition in the World!

Yours Expeditionally,

Ben

It really has been THE busiest last couple of weeks. My apologies for not updating the blog recently but this should make up for it at least! In preparation for the Best Expedition in the World which starts at the end of May, (less than 11 weeks away) I’ve been chasing sponsors, planning itineraries, training on the Brisbane River and now building my Hobie Mirage kayak and getting it ready for the 1600km challenge that lies ahead.

As with The Best Job in in the World the idea of the expedition is to take the story of the Great Barrier Reef to the rest of the planet; to educate about the life there, to expose some of the incredible locations and to make people just that little bit jealous so they’ll come out and experience it for themselves! My ultimate goal would be to have another television series shot documenting the adventure telling the story of the expedition, the characters we meet along the way and the people who research and protect one of the Natural Wonders of the World. As a bit of a prelude to this TPD Media (who film programs here in Australia such as Queensland Weekender, Great South East and Creek to Coast) and I decided to head out to Lady Elliot Island to film a short pilot episode for a possible series. This meant getting everything I’d expect to have on the expedition…including the kayak out onto the Great Barrier Reef! At extremely short notice the owner of Lady Elliot island and Seair (the small airline who fly to the island itself) Peter Gash managed to find a plane, strip out enough seats to take the 4m kayak and fly us out for a couple of days of filming.

We took with us an old friend and kayaking guru, Eddie Safarik, to shoot some still images and Richard Vevers from Underwater Earth; the company we’ll be working with throughout the expedition to bring you the most incredible images and film footage we can so you can live the adventure from right where you are now – sat at your computer. A really early morning start in Brisbane saw Sophee and I drive down to the Gold Coast and our flight headed straight up into the dark clouds and rain, our light plane being buffeted around by the squally conditions. We’d managed to load the four metre kayak into the plane along with the camera gear and people we’d need to make this event happen; some first time visitors to the island, others have been before and fallen in love with the place. Peter brought the plane to a halt on the rough coral runway after 90 minutes of flying and it was straight into the action – off to the Coral Gardens to have some still shots taken that will be used on the new website, launched later this year. Eddie really had me working it I can tell you; on the beach, in the water, sailing, paddling and even some really cool underwater ones too.

Next stop was the filming of an episode of Queensland Weekender (the show goes to air on Saturday 26th March on Ch7 here in Aus). Dean Miller the host wanted to know all about the Best Expedition so I took him diving, had a walk along the beach and out on the water to demonstrate how I’ll be moving up the coastline from May through September using my Hobie.

We then headed out onto the dive boats, donned our dive gear and into the water with Richard and Christophe from Underwater Earth. They’ll be coming along at key times during the expedition to help us film THE most amazing underwater sequences that will bring to life what happens on the Great Barrier Reef. The underwater scooters we used have been developed as prototypes to see how the footage looks before the real things are built in the next few weeks. This part of the project is particularly exciting and we hope to bring you a world first very soon. Watch this space…

Mother Nature gave us the complete run down of what to expect from the weather whilst out there with strong winds, driving rain and then an hour later totally blue skies and sunshine, something I have to be very prepared for, come May 21st. Next stop, a two-day test voyage to Tangalooma Resort on Moreton Island onboard the Hobie kayak. We intend sailing the 42kms in a day, stopping overnight to film the dolphin feeding and sailing back the next day. It’s all starting to get a little real now!!

Yours expeditionally Ben

Finally after months of planning, thinking and NOT talking about it…I can let the cat out of the bag about my next BIG adventure!!

In May 2011 I will set off on a 1600km expedition along the Great Barrier Reef from the Town of 1770 all the way north to Cooktown winding my way through the islands and along the reef. My ‘Voyage of Discovery’ will retrace the route taken by the original English adventurer and seafarer Captain James Cook who navigated and charted the waters of the Coral Sea back in 1770.

He took just over three weeks to travel the length of the Queensland coastline. I will be taking just over three months.

I’m not trying to set any records for endurance, distance or speed but instead embarking on the journey to investigate the care-taking of this incredibly beautiful underwater environment I’ve been lucky enough to witness first hand during the six months of the Best job in the World.

This is the about bringing the encounters and experiences that I witness to you through my new website, as well as the usual Facebook and Twitter channels. You’ll be able to track my progress in real-time and see where we are on Google Maps, watch movies and video-blogs of the adventure as it happens both above and below the water.

Originally I was going to paddle the entire way in a sea kayak but have now settled on a much better way of going about things. I’ll be using a Hobie Adventure Island that can be paddled, peddled or sailed meaning I can travel between locations much quicker and if heaven forbid I became injured, I’d still be able to continue on the journey using a different means of propulsion. SunState Hobie have been kind enough to supply me with the vessel and my training can now start in earnest as I learn to handle it in all waters. Mal Gray from SunState Hobie has come on-board by supplying the vessel and I can’t thank him enough for the support.

Keith Roberts of Whitsunday Catamarans has been kind and brave enough to offer one of his fleet, a 40ft Lagoon Catamaran named ‘Whitsunday Blue’, as the support vessel and to come along on the adventure as the skipper. The project needs someone with Keith’s knowledge, experience and adventurous attitude to ensure that is works and I’m indebted to him for the commitment.

To run a website that’s as up-to-date and informative as I’m planning will require a pretty impressive office setup in order to create, edit and update all of the information we’ll be collating. The support vessel will be exactly that, a base where I will work every day to provide an online story of the adventure with blogs, photos and videos.

In order to understand the Great Barrier Reef a little better and to help see how human-kind is changing such a sensitive eco-system I will be working closely with GBRMPA (Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority) and Reef Check, a research charity who study and help look after coral reefs around the world. We will dive in lots of different locations as we go, researching and recording everything that we find. This data is then used by the clever people, scientists and boffins who can make sense it and educate people and ultimately protect one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World.

The project was launched on Wednesday and we’re already getting some good media coverage with clips on Channel 9, 10 and the Today Show (see below) along with the print media really getting behind the project. My friend Alice Tsou from Taiwan was straight onto it with a blog post too!

But this is now where the really hard work starts. We need to organise logistics, itineraries and expedition partners to help fund the expedition, so if you are a company or individual who’d like to get involved please contact me at Tourism Queensland via the link on this page – I look forward to hearing from you!

Stay tuned as things develop, I’ll be updating the website as often as I can.

Ben

My kayaking partner and good friend Eddie Safarik recently completed the first crossing from Fraser Island to Lady Elliot Island in the Capricornia group, 95kms away, with two friends Gaz and Paul.

The guys are an inspiration when it comes to the idea of out-there adventure and a great source of motivation towards my ‘next big idea’ that will be happening in 2011.

Have a listen to the interview here:

Eddie’s interview

Been out on the water again training and getting used to some heavier water conditions around Moreton Bay. the wind was pumping at 20 knots and the waves were pretty damn big!

Here’s the route I took: