Whitehaven Beach is roughly 98 per cent silica, sand so fine it squeaks underfoot and stays cool through the middle of the day. The seven-kilometre strand lies on Whitsunday Island, the largest of 74 continental islands scattered across the passage. These are not coral cays but drowned mountains — the peaks of a coastal range flooded when sea levels rose after the last ice age. James Cook charted the inner route in June 1770 and named it for the day he believed he was sailing, though his ship's calendar ran a day behind. Nearly every Whitsundays overnight yacht still follows water he sounded with a lead line. The Ngaro people crossed this water long before any of that. They worked the channels in bark canoes for thousands of years, and ochre figures remain on the rock shelter walls at Nara Inlet, on Hook Island. Most of the archipelago now sits within Whitsunday Islands National Park, Queensland, Australia, where entry costs 0 AUD and fees apply only to camping permits. There are no gates and no closing hour; the park is open water. Beyond the fringing reefs lies the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, World Heritage-listed since 1981 and still the reason these anchorages are managed mooring by mooring. Sailing here carries its own lineage. Several vessels working the passage are retired offshore racers, long narrow maxi hulls rebuilt for liveaboard sailing between anchorages rather than for trophies. Airlie Beach and the adjacent Port of Airlie serve as the mainland departure point for most Whitsunday Islands sailing tours. From there, whitsundays overnight yacht tours trace a familiar arc: Hook Passage, Border Island, the coral gardens at Blue Pearl Bay and Luncheon Bay, then south again toward Cid Harbour, where the water shelves deep enough to hold a small fleet at anchor. What holds attention is the tidal work at Hill Inlet, where the ebb drags white silica across dark shallows and redraws the pattern twice a day. Southeast trade winds run steady across much of the year, which is why the passage rewards canvas over engine. After dark the anchorages go quiet enough to hear rigging tick against the mast, and the sky above Whitsunday and Hook islands carries no city light at all. Read that way, a Whitsundays overnight yacht tour is less a crossing than a slow survey of 74 islands, one anchorage at a time.