Greg Bishop recently spent an amazing week away with his son sailing the beautiful Whitsundays. No stranger to Dream Yacht Charter, Greg has sailed with us on 2 previous occasions and is a big fan of our reservations staff who go out of their way to make our clients sailing holidays as smooth and easy as possible.

We are grateful to Greg for sharing his story with us and we hope it inspires you to book your own Whitsundays adventure soon!

My son is now 19 years old and growing up fast and like most Dad’s I’m wondering where the years have gone from those first baby steps to school years & now university & who knows how long before he settles down moves out and starts a new life out of the family home and our time together is less and less.

I decided to have a father and son week away and what a week it was.

Our first day out of the marina was quite calm and a nice sail to Macona inlet for our first night.

There we went investigating a small waterfall at the end of the inlet which had some quite steep rocky cliffs to negotiate.

At the top we found a Forrest with thousands of butterflies and lots of ants, climbing our way back down some slippery rocks I found I was stuck slipping and in a bit of a predicament behind my son, he quickly lowered his leg for me to climb with as I had no hold on the rock and grabbed my hand to pull me up that’s about where I realised what a strong and agile man he is growing into and that’s when the bonding started as he saved me from a nasty fall and was proud he was able to do it.

The next day Mother Nature gave us a stiff 25 knot wind to start our first day and that really put us to the test working together to reef the sails in and manage quite a big swell which was really exhilarating with waves crashing over the bow and listening to the shrill of excitement together.

At night we would cook together and then sit up on deck with all the lights off and star gaze for comets and the odd meteorite .

Here it gave us a chance to talk, I mean really open up about life & relationships and all the things on a young man’s mind that in normal circumstances wouldn’t be spoken about and I got a greater understanding of who he is and what he believes in.

We would always share the sailing and anchoring and hoisting the sails, trimming the boat as a team and seeing the enthusiasm for learning and trying to get the fastest knots for the day ……I lost.

The days were filled with laughter and the occasional gangster rap music but mostly the adventure together was a feeling you can’t describe from spotting a big Dugong next to us to a bay full of stingrays. There is even an abandoned club Med resort that the caretaker let us roam around. My favourite was the run together to the lookout on Hamilton island .

Time together you can’t put a price on.

We have a strong united bond now.

I went away as his father and always will be but you can see that look we have at each other now is something else, a bond I couldn’t have achieved without time away together working as a team to create solutions for any problems a sailing trip throws at you.

If you are like me and have an amazing son but YOU haven’t got that relationship you would like for whatever reason , working long and late hours , traveling for work etc and you miss the fact that he just doesn’t get you and vice versa

GO SAILING GO SAILING
DO IT FOR YOURSELVES

Captain Greig & my first mate Cooper