Author: paulcollister

Not really, but we did do some practising.

We left Phi Phi Le, the setting of “The Beach Movie” on Monday 6th, I was glad to be away, a lovely location, but totally spoilt by the hordes of visitors, in contrast, we arrived at Ko Yum, a 4 hour motor away to find deserted beaches, with very tasteful resort chalet nestled in the trees. We like it here so much we have decided to stay a few days, before sailing south. The wind has gone away this week, 5 knots, and we are anchored just off a lovely beach in 5 mtrs of water.
I have been doing boat chores, and today I rigged up the danbuoy and lifebuoy in their designated spots at the stern of the boat. I manufactured holders for the danbuoy from plastic piping bits I bought in the hardware superstore. These are devices that are thrown to a man overboard to help in his survival and recovery. The danbuoy is basically a floating flagpole with a flag and light on the top, however ours is without the light at present. The lifebuoy is what you grab hold of to stay afloat, that comes with a very modern flashing light, automatically activated when it hits water.
So once it was all fitted in an easily accessable spot, I threw myself over the back of the boat shouting “Man Overboard” and waiting in the icy treacherous waters for help 😉
Kathy chucked the lot over and I was saved. Let’s hope we never need to do that for real.

Kathy loves the ramshackle beach bars here, it’s a very chilled spot.

Tomorrow, a short hop down the coast to Ko Lanta, then a larger hop down to Ko Tarutao and the Butang group of islands.

 

Paul Collister

Yes it continues, lovely unspoilt beaches, crystal clear waters, relaxing sails, blah blah blah. Nothing really exciting to report.

We spent Thursday in Phuket town, checking out and picking up spares for the trip, we restocked at a few stores on food and drink, and went to immigration, Harbour Master and Customs to check out. Back to the boat, and a very low spring tide, so everything was exactly the same as the last time we loaded up the boat bringing the trolley down a very steep ramp to the pontoons, however this time I stayed out of the water. One thing I realised, is that as I fell backwards into the water, I pulled on the trolley to try to stop myself falling, and that’s what helped bring it onto my head. I should have pushed it away from me, that way I would just have got wet and the trolley may have stayed ashore. I wonder how fast your brain would have to work to suss that out in the split second you have. Obviously faster than my old grey matter.

So Friday morning we left early on slack water, 3 hours before high tide, and headed off to Ko Yao, a big island with a few villages and had a lovely overnight stop, Saturday we left early without going ashore and continued straight on to Phi Phi Dom, arriving an hour or two before sunset.

We were lucky to pick up a mooring buoy here, as anchoring is difficult, the waters very deep off the coast, and is sandy, which isn’t the best for anchors, they prefer mud. also as the water gets shallow, there is lots of coral you could damage, or even get your anchor stuck under. I have a system ready to deploy when I drop they anchor, that will allow me to get a stuck anchor out, but I haven’t tried it yet.

We are here primarily so Kathy can visit ‘The Beach’. If you don’t know what ‘The Beach’ is , then you’re probably not a Leanordo fan. It’s going to be very crowded, but it has to be done. Later today I hope we can scoot across the rest of phang Nga bay to Ko Yum, just off the mainland Thai coast where we continue our journey south to Malaysia.

I have some good footage of fish I shot yesterday with the goPro, will try to edit that up.

As far as our position goes, there is little AIS coverage on the internety around here, but I self report to Marine Traffic via my mobile phone each day and on passage. If you want the latest position, check us out here.

AIS Position details here

The Autohelm is behaving well since I fixed the rudder feedback, so fingers crossed. Everything else is working well. so All’s good here in Paradise 😉

 

 

Friday and we left Pan Yi just as the day trippers started arriving around 11 and decided to have lunch at Ko Khai as Kathy believed there was a good hong there. From there we would travel south to Ko Phanak, the island we started this trip around the bay from a few weeks ago.

Above you can see the route we took. Below I have zoomed in on a section not long after we left Pan Yi. You can see the course goes off in a swinging sine wave motion.

This is caused by the Auto-helm throwing a wobbly, It’s been doing this randomly for a while now and I have no idea why. It can be quite unnerving depending on where you are, and very annoying if beating with the sails close hauled and it causes you to tack and back the sails. The only thing that was a clue was the ERROR 67 that flashed on the screen every now and then, this error indicates the rudder feedback is missing. The unit should operate without feedback, just not as well. Anyway, as it was such a calm day, I thought I would investigate, and sure enough the weight of the cable loom in the rudder area had pulled a wire off the sensor connector block. An easy repair, the harness secured better and no more error 67. I also had no more wild course changes, but that may just be a fluke.

With that fixed we arrived at the Ko. It’s only a small island but it turned out to have an exquisite little hong, easy to access by dinghy.

There’s a little video here. Don’t poke fun at me leaving the sail up. For non yachties, it’s a bit like leaving your engine running with the keys in the ignition and the door open on the exit ramp of a multi storey car park, oh, and with an iffy handbrake. What could possibly go wrong. In actual fact there wasn’t a whisper of wind at all for a few hours around then.

Today we had a great trip into a long tunnel at Phanak, we forgot the torches, so that was fun. more on that later. No we are off to the Yacht Haven anchorage, then chilling, restock, and exit via immigration/harbour master early next week.

 

Paul Collister

 

We left Krabi Boat lagoon (Marina) on Monday morning, the tide was very weird, I thought we would leave an hour later than high water the day before, tides advance by about an hour each day, but was shocked to find High water was about 5 hours later than the previous day. I wish I had time to work out what was going on. There was about ten hours between low and high water, instead of the normal six. The end result was the earliest we could leave was about 16:00 on a not very high tide, I was a little concerned, but the marina manager, Ben, who was most helpful during our stay, was confident we would make it, and it was on a rising tide anyway. So we left, I’m hoping there is a little timelapse of us leaving the pontoon below. The marina was lovely and I’m looking forward to returning one day.

With us only having 2-3 hours before dark, we couldn’t go too far and planned to anchor nearby, but once we cleared the mud flats, we had an hour of daylight left, just enough to reach the small island of Ko Dam Hok, a protective anchorage for all winds, just as the sun would be setting. When we arrived we saw a load of big mooring buoys, so we picked up one and called it  a day.

Tuesday and off to Ko Hong, the Krabi one, there’s another Ko Hong to the west. After a slowish sail we again found another lovely mooring buoy awaited us, here the water was so clear I took the GoPro with me for a swim. You can see the video below I hope, uploads of hundreds of megabytes take a while on a throttled 3g phone connection. You can just see some things, I’m calling them jellyfish, but they are just translucent bubbly alien looking creatures that float past me. I think they might explain some of the stings I have, one quite bad.

Ko Hong has a big hong, we dinghied in easily and then I rowed around, all day scores of day tripper boats had been ferrying holiday makers around, but we waited until later when they had all left. One other yachtie was motoring around in his dinghy, but once he left we had it to ourselves, and it was lovely and peaceful, a big hong, but at the current mid tide it had about 3ft of water in the middle, it was about the size of half a football field. the peace lasted just a moment, when a motor cruiser steamed in, full of screeching people with music blasting out. they anchored, and jumped into the water, screeching, shouting and singing along with the eurotrashy music that was blasting out and echoing around the hong. Kathy and I put on our best BBC “Disgusted of Cheshire” expressions, how very dare they! So we rowed on, our evil stares at them had no effect.
Wednesday we left at a leisurely pace, hoisted the sails and headed back to the middle of the bay. I had wanted to cut through the gap between Ko Yao Noi & Yai, stopping at a village there, but the pilot book recommends we need 2.5 metres of tide and we only had 2, so that plan was scrapped, I went back to the north of the island group and we headed for Ko Roi, which has an amazing Hong, accessible by a small cave like entrance. This Hong was the most amazing so far, massive inside, and populated with a huge bat colony.Kathy loved it and will no doubt write more about it. Pics below.
You can just see the entrance to the hong in the very centre of the picture. The hong is basically the whole of the inside of the island!

A small vid of the entrance

 

 

Inside is the harry potter forest of replicas

Looking out from the entrance

 

I also have a video clip of the bats here

Thursday we left early, partly because two huge catamarans turned up late last night, full of Russians, they’re not quite as reserved as us Brits, and they were here to party. They also liked to play their music loud, they anchored either side of us, just a little ahead, and spent a lot of time shouting between the two boats, when not jumping into the water. So by 08:30, we were off heading north to the small fishing village of Ko Panyi, this is an interested place, with a fascinating background, but Kathy will cover the detail, from my point of view, I loved how they had built a village on sticks clinging to the side of a big vertical walled island.  We arrived at about 11:30 just as 50 million tourists were brought here by long tail boats to feast on fresh fish, grown (not caught) in lots of fish farm nets all around the village. We are anchored right next to a large one. We went over to the village and waked around, what was once a self sufficient fishing community, has now become a tourist hot spot with many restaurants built onto the waterfront just to service the visitors. It’s been here a long time, and the sticks have mostly been replaced with concrete piles. While we were looking for somewhere to eat, much harder from the village inside than from the waterfront, only accessible by boat, a bit of a squall built up and I worried if we would drag, so we popped back to the boat, crossing a rougher river now.

The village from a distance

The kids here liked my dinghy, Scouse kids would have had a few bob off me by now to ‘look after my boat’ 😉

 

No land for a footie pitch, not a problem, but a slightly flawed plan if you ask me.

The local barber

Sister Midnight still there.

Tomorrow we head south, should make a fast passage with the wind behind us. Slowly working our way back to the Yacht Haven marina, then to check out of Thailand next week and head back south to Malaysia.

So Friday morning arrived and the wind had calmed and it was now a lovely hot morning. The constant buzz of long tails racing back and forth was a bit irritating so I phoned the Krabi boat lagoon to see if they had a berth, and I was advised to be at the entrance at 12:30 in order to get over the sand banks that surround the estuary entrance. So we had a slow breakfast while I worked out a route to get to the marina, however a quick estimate showed me it was 3 hours away and it was already 9. So up with the anchor and off, if we got there too late we would risk going aground. As we left Ao Nang bay, (Ao actually means bay, so that reads bay Nang bay) we hit some headwinds and the sea was still a bit rough, our speed dropped and I had to motor at max revs to get there on time. The marina is located in the mangroves some distance up a river, off another river, but before that there is a very shallow bay/estuary to cross. We had to motor very slowly over the sandbanks, most of the time in 3 metres of water. Once we were in the river it improved to 4 metres and everything was easy then

The marina is very quiet, situated in the mangroves and surrounded by salt pans, just down the road is a little fishing village, village might be overkill, about ten houses and some makeshift jetties, all on wooden sticks.

Once we had settled in we organised a car and went off to explore the area. It’s about 30 minutes drive from here to Krabi town, typically Thai, with markets and stalls. The river is very beautiful, and we drove on to a secluded beach another 30 mins past the main resort area. It’s a strange place, it seems most of the best beaches are only accessible by boat, many have hotels and resort complexes, all supplied by boat.

From a pleasant lunch at the beach we spent the evening in Krabi town, looking at the various stalls and picking up some fresh fruit.

I had to buy some new distance spectacles on account of my advanced forward planning strategy. Basically in the event of an afterlife existing, I figure Davy Jones will be involved, so I have sent a few items on ahead. I’m hoping to be reunited with them later, as I’m not sure if they have opticians, or a spannerworld in the afterlife. I know I’m going to be OK for caps, and now I definitely should be fine for specs after sending my last pair over the side last week!! So it was interesting going to an opticians to get an eye test when she didn’t speak any English. It all went well, I saw her on Saturday afternoon, and collected my new specs on Sunday morning, at a reasonable price too.

After collecting the specs, we went off to a hot water spring spa, that was very pleasant, a series of pools where very hot water cascaded down the hill passing through the various pools, each pool a little cooler, or should I say , less scalding, than the one feeding it. The first pool was stated to be 49deg C, too hot for me. I did like the 39 deg one, and spent some time relaxing in that.

Back on the boat now and we have a new neighbour who arrived while we were out, a Cabo Rico 38, this is a classic boat, very much in the style of a Baba, but a bit more classic looking, with a very fancy bit of scrollwork at the bow.

So Keith, the owner, and I discussed varnish, as you do, then we went for dinner at the marina (me and Kathy, that is)

Tomorrow we cast off our lines and head out back to sea. Ko Yao being our first destination, but because the high water tide is now a couple of hours later than when we arrived, and not as high, we won’t get out of here till after 2 pm and may have to anchor somewhere locally for the night. We want to be back in Phuket, no later than next weekend as our visas expire soon and we have to get sailing south to Malaysia.

Paul Collister

 

 

 

 

 

This morning we woke in Ko Ku Do Yai and explored an old hong that had collapsed in several places and was easy to access from the sea. There were some lovely beaches within, and a little path that led to another nice beach.

This island is home to a lot of bats, but I only saw butterflies. Back to the boat and off into a darkening sky with a rising wind, The wind was from the East, and we were heading mostly South East, so I was hoping to get the new sails up and see how they worked. It would have been a three hour trip by motoring at 5.5 knots and we had 6 hours, so I figured we should take advantage of the flattish seas and a 10 knot rising wind to see how she handles.

As we headed out into the bay, we noticed lots of yachts heading down from the north, later we could see that they were all anchoring at the Paradise resort on Ko Yao, it turns out this was the 20th Bay Regatta, and looks like a great event. Perhaps we could enter this next year.

I was able to get all the new sails flying fairly quickly, the staysail wouldn’t fully unfurl, and a trip to the bow showed me the furling line had bunched up on the drum and looking closer I could see the frame around the drum was egg shaped, must have been bashed at some point. Not a big deal to sort anyway.
So straight away I could feel the difference, we picked up speed quickly and where making  great speed, quite close to the wind. Adjusting the sail trim, I found we could get very close to the wind, much better than before. The wind continued to pick up, and by the time we reached Krabi, we had 20 knots on the nose, and quite big waves, the wind had backed a bit so I had to tack for the last leg, this was great, I went further than I needed to on the first leg as I wasn’t sure what angle the boat would tack through, before it was about 120 degrees, but now it was more like 80 degrees, I need to do more work, but you can see how we easily manage 90 degrees on the track above.
I have found that my wireless wind meter on the masthead is a bit rubbish, I can’t rely on it at all, it was reading 10 knots the other night, when it was howling and the boat was tipping over at anchor, my handheld meter was registering 20-25 knots. Today I had full sail up, too much really for the conditions by the end of the day.
Arriving at Krabi was weird, seeing a road with cars on it was slightly unnerving, we haven’t seen any roads, power cables, vehicles or buildings for ten days now.  We have only seen a sprinkling of people as well, but now it seems like we are in Disney land, we can hear dance/house music blasting from a long shoreline, backlit with hotels and restaurants, fire-eaters are illuminating the beach with their dance routines and we are surrounded by long-tails whizzing around ferrying tourists to the various islands off the coast here.
We have had to anchor some distance from the shore as it is too shallow up close, and as it’s now raining, windy and the sea is a bit choppy, we haven’t ventured ashore. Tomorrow maybe. I would like to see if we can get a berth in the marina here so we can travel into the town and check out the area.

Paul Collister

 

We stayed an extra day tucked behind Ko Yang as the wind was quite strong and gusty from the north, It was a nice enough spot and the anchor was holding well against 20-30 knot gusts.
I have a system I’m using with the anchor now, it seems to work very well, but it still needs refinement. We have a problem that here the currents tend to run quite strong 2-3 knots most of the time, and I think that the long keel shape of our hull dictates that we always face into the current, no matter how windy it gets. So we often find ourselves pointing one way, say east, because thats where the tidal flow comes from, yet the wind from the west pushes us to the length of our anchor chain. This puts the anchor chain under the hull of the boat, this is worst case, more often it’s somewhere between, and the anchor chain is shooting of to the side of the boat, when it’s going to the port side , it rubs on the bobstay and makes a most unsettling noise.
The solution I’m testing, is a line of rope from the fitting at the bottom of the bobstay which goes to a hook on the anchor chain. I might have mentioned this on a previous post, This rope is nylon, about ten metres long and does several things, 1) It acts like a snubber, putting some elasticity into the system, so we don’t see any shock loads. 2) It keeps the chain away from the bobstay so we don’t get any chafing or scraping there. 3) It lowers the angle of the anchor rode to the sea bed effectively increasing the ‘scope’ of the anchor. The scope is all about the angle between the anchor rope and the sea bed, the lower the better. In 5 metres of water, we would want 25 metres of chain for a 5:1 scope, when you add another 2 metres from the water surface to the bowsprit platform, you are effectively reducing the scope to less than 4:1. Anchors work best when the pull is horizontal along the seabed, and worst when the pull is upwards. So far this works well, my only concern is that when the rope is rubbing against the hull it must be chafing on the sharp barnacles there. It doesn’t matter if it snaps, as the slack chain is still there to take up the strain.

On Sunday there was a break in the wind so we left, the forecast was for the wind to stay strong, so our visit to a muslim fishing village was called off, looking at the chart, there didn’t seem much shelter there. We headed over to Ko Yang where we had better shelter, we dinghied around a bit and I finished off the software and installed it on a server back in the UK. I love the idea of working on my two servers, one in Utah and the other in the UK from a cosy anchorage here. The time zones work out well to, I can do my work early before anyone is up back home, do some sailing through the day, then come tea time, take calls and answer emails.
We were joined in this little sheltered cove by several other ‘sunsail’ and ‘Moorings’ charter yachts, 4 boats in total, this is the most crowded spot we have been in so far!

Tuesday was still not great weather, but we decided to race across to the far side of the bay, this is in the region called Krabi, with a town of the same name. We went to the top of the area and found a lovely secluded bay on the SW corner of Ko Chong Lat Tai, where we went ashore. Most of these bays are on uninhabited islands with only access by sea, so very unspoilt, other than debris washed up. Kathy spotted a monkey strolling along the beach. I spotted that we had a deflating tube on the dinghy, that didn’t take long! I have searched for a leak and can’t find one, now I have pumped it up again, it has stayed ok. I’m trying to convince myself that the act of searching for the leak, somehow gained me brownie Karma points with the dinghy and it has self healed, I know it’s a long shot, but what else can I do.

This is a lovely island, we dinghied around the various mini islands that are littered everywhere, we motored into what was probably once a hong, but one side had collapsed exposing it to the sea, we just managed to get the dinghy in over a very shallow rocky entrance, and had a lovely paddle around. Kathy has some good pics.

The next morning (Today, Wednesday) we were approached by local fishermen offering their wares, I bought some big prawns, dinner for tonight. They aren’t that cheap, £5 for 1/2 kg, but they will make a lovely meal, and I don’t begrudge the locals some business at all. It’s not everyday you get to eat prawns that freshly caught.

So we weighed anchor and headed south, we are aiming to be in Krabi town area in a few days time, we may go into the marina there for a day, just to restock on water and fuel. We have two stops on the way, tonight we are at Ko Ku Du YaiOne other yacht just arrived but it’s very quiet here, we are wedged into a very small channel between the two islands. There is easy access to some hongs here, which we will explore tomorrow before heading of to the other famous hong that’s called Ko Hong, not to be confused the hong at Ko Hong (west). I’m getting the hang of the hongs now (groan).

Paul Collister

 

 

 

 

 

Not really, but we dried out last night and sunk into the mud a foot or so. No big deal, should have read the notes I later found that said the tidal range here is a metre higher than the tide tables say. Also the charts are not very accurate in this area.

So Friday morning, up early and a dinghy ride over to our first hong. We beached the dinghy, pulled it up the beech, and failing to find anything to tie it too, I dug an anchor into the shell like sand, better than nothing. The tide was rising and the beech itself would be gone in a couple of hours, so I felt I ought to make an effort.

The entrance to this hong is through a long tunnel, the water was up to our knees, but would be closer to our heads at high water. It wasn’t a long tunnel, but very dark and my torch wasn’t really up to the job. It was a lot better though once I took off my sunglasses Duh. we got half way in, it was very disorientating, as it twisted and turned, all the time the water got deeper. Kathy decided to go back, she’s not mad about walking in water in the dark towards an uncertain future. I waited until I could see her leave the tunnel and proceeded, it was only another 50 meters and I emerged into a lovely grotto like world. An inside out island, basically a cylinder cutout from the island with a small lagoon in the middle, prehistoric and quite enchanting.

Then we had a motor around the island in the dinghy, getting close to the overhanging stalactites. Back to The boat and off to Ko Hang, or Ko Hong as it’s sometimes called.

Here is a hong everyone visits, Kayaks constantly pour into and out of the caves, you can get in by dinghy, but it’s not recommended unless near low water, but what the hell, I gave it a go. It was close getting back, as we only just fitted into the tunnel, with the rising tide. You can see the gap below, thats just about the width of the dinghy and the only way out until the tide goes out in 6 hours time.

Above we returned to a lovely lagoon where we could see Sister Midnight happy at anchor in the distance.

From Phanak, we went up towards James Bond Island, as it has become known since it starred in “The man with the golden gun”, I can only vaguely remember the film, and have no great desire to go to the island, unlike half of the tourists who visit Phuket and Krabi, the day trip boats are constantly arriving here to drop people off.

By now, Saturday, the weather had got worse, the wind was gusting 20-25 knots from the north, and we had a few rainy squalls blow through. We took shelter that night behind an island that should have protected us from the north round to the east. The wind is meant to be in the east, but the wind backed to NNW so the wind blew hard on us, We dragged our anchor, which was fine, as these things will happen, and I thought it good practice to reset it in the dark at midnight with the wind blowing hard. There was a big rock in the water behind us, but I reckoned the wind would take us past it if the worst came to the worst then we had a good mile before the shallows. We re-anchored fine, except I went a little too close to the shore, and was woken at 5am by the distinct feeling I was going to roll off the bed, we had about a 20 deg list to starboard. I checked we hadn’t moved too much, and went to back to bed wondering how 5m minus 2m can equal 1.3m, still all was fine, when I woke up we were floating again. I cooked Sunday breakfast of poached eggs, and we then headed off to the North East for our next destination, near a fishing village built on sticks, but the wind was very strong, the sea a bit rough and there was no guarantee of any great shelter there, so we swung around and came back to anchor just behind a little island called Ko Yang, which is a lovely spot. However the wind is still strong, and little blasts keep hitting us and tipping the boat around. Not enough to spill any of Kathy’s wine fortunately.
By the way, it might seem like paradise out here, but you try finding a plumber in paradise who can come out to the boat and unblock the system! The problem is the usual calcification of the pipes and fittings, blockage removed, and all is good again, but there’s a bigger job there for sometime in the future.
We are going to stay here until this bad patch of weather passes, we will dinghy ashore in a moment to explore this lovely little island and take some pics.

Paul Collister

 

It’s Thursday evening now, internet is poor and writing this blog is affecting our reception of BBC 6 music live, via the net. Life can be so tough at times. We are at anchor on the NE end of Ko Phanak. We left the Marina on Tuesday morning about 11 am. No problem leaving the pontoon, until I tried to motor out and the vibration was a bit much and the speed very slow. I concluded the prop was fouled worse than I thought. We motored slowly around to the fuel dock but the tide was quite low, the fuel dock is right in the shallow area. I would have to approach it from the wrong angle and do the boaty equivalent of a handbrake turn in order to go alongside without going aground, as we approached and the depth dropped to 3 metres with another 50 metres to go, I bottled out. I wasn’t sure how the boat would handle with such a fouled prop, anyway, we have half a tank of fuel, should be good enough for a while.
So off to Ko Phanak, an island with lots of Hongs (big caves with no roof and beaches sort of thing, hong means ‘room’ in Thai), Kathy is going to write more about these, and as we haven’t seen one yet, I wont say anything, but they’re supposed to be amazing.
We stopped for lunch just a little way out from the marina and I dived on the prop, I have a garden hoe like tool which I scrape the prop with, it takes a bit of time as the prop is just a little too far down for me and my snorkel, I’m practicing holding my breath. Once that was done, and we had a little lunch we pushed on. Not much wind so we continued to motor.

You can see our planned route, the black line, and our corner cutting course in yellow. Only a short journey, but it took us into a whole new landscape, we anchored for two nights at the bottom of the island and today we moved to the top on the other side. We haven’t launched the dinghy yet, mostly relaxing and enjoying not being tied to a dock and that routine. This is my favourite part I think, no need to do anything, and nobody is going to bother you, so you really can just swing on the anchor, day in , day out, watching the sun rise and set, followed by a big, nearly full moon right now. A fisherman motored past today in his longtail and waved a fish at me, I shouted no thanks back, as he caught me off guard, and my instinctive british ways have me saying no before I thought it through. Kathy added insult to injury by saying I should have bought it as it was the only way I would get one! So when a few hours later another fisherman waved a fish at me, I called him over and a deal was struck. £6 for a large fish like thing that will make 2 meals, no idea what it was, it looked rather angry, but tasted great.

That’s the moon, special effect caused by Kathy keeping a spare stock of greasy cream on her iPhone lens!

After saying all of that, I have been getting up early and working till late writing software. I took on some data processing and analysis work a few days ago, I’m talking (well my software is) to 3 big wind turbines in Eastern Europe and trying to predict how much electricity they will generate from an amalgam of various weather forecasts available. So basically I’m pulling in 4 different weather forecasts every 2 hours, and predicting the generation by the turbines and providing that data to the Electric grid so they can forward plan. I’m then pulling back the actual power generated and comparing that with the various forecasts to see the errors and trying to work out how to get the forecasts more accurate.
I did ask myself why on earth am I doing work, the answer is mostly that it pays quite well, I did a little bit of work over the Christmas period and so far I have earned enough to pay for the new sails, and all my marina fees for the last 3 months, Also I’m keen to see how practical it is to sit at anchor on a boat in Phang Nga bay, writing software and working with remote data servers and turbines. Quite practical it would appear, assuming you don’t mind paying high 4g data fees, (well £1/day, mustn’t grumble). So it might mean I have to spend a few months extra in this paradise before we move on, as I said, it’s a tough life. 😉

Entertainment has revolved around twitter of late, I’m captivated by POTUS and his tweets, each one, seemingly crazier than the last, being followed by a dissection from the NY Times and others, #FASCINATING, 🙂

Tomorrow we are up early and will launch the dinghy, and explore some hongs before the tour boats arrive and disgorge their scores of day trippers with their kayaks. Later I want to learn how to do some OPC data transfers, any of you techies out there good at this?

Paul Collister

Up early today, it was a very hot night and difficult to sleep, so I took advantage of the cooler morning breeze at 07:30 to get the mainsail on and up, it took over three hours. The bag / lazy jack system had to be installed as I had removed it for repairs, this is a system that provides a big bag arrangement on the boom, so that if I drop the sail quickly, as I might need to if a squall appears from nowhere, then the sail falls into the bag, guided in by thin ropes on each side of the sail. Without this system, the sail might end up all over the deck, and could get blown over the side, worst case.

Also, despite trying hard to get the battens pockets the same size, the new sail had smaller pockets, so the battens had to be trimmed. There are five battens, made of long fiberglass strips, about 1″ * 1/4″ in cross section and run the full width of the sail at various points. The idea is to keep the sail flat and the correct shape, even if there isn’t that much wind, and when there is a lot of wind, they reduce the flogging in the sail and hence increase its longevity.

I have luff lines, leech lines, cunninghams and maybe other bits of rope hanging out the corners of the sail. I’m supposed to be able to pull , or loosen these little ropes, that act like the string on your swimming trunks, to make small adjustments to the sail shape. Im not a performance sailer, so will have to work these out as we go along.

 

M5 ( ex Mirabella) is still here, who is rich enough to have a big yacht just sitting there week in week out not earning its keep!
I took this picture today where you can see the plane they keep on board, many big superyachts have a helicopter platform, for the chopper, which makes sense, as how else is the customer going to get from the airport to the boat! but an airplane, really. I’m assuming it’s one that takes off on water, otherwise, it’s a bit of a daft idea without a runway. I suppose it could use harrier vertical takeoff technology.
I read that no decent superyacht is seen out without its own submarine these days, I don’t need one of those, as I keep proving 😉

Paul Collister.