Well I was impressed when we pulled up alongside one of Roman Abramovitch’s motor yachts in Dublin City marina some years ago, but today I noticed a mega yacht had arrived in the marina, on the outside pontoon across from us. I looked up on the AIS and found M5 at the correct bearing from us so had a look and discovered It’s called M5, previously known as Mirabella 5.It’s the biggest sloop in the world, and number 6 in the biggest yacht list overall. We saw her from a distance once in the med where she famously went aground after dragging her anchor. She seems to get around a bit.
Despite being the largest single masted yacht ever made, she only has room for twelve guests, only 6 more than we can handle, however I expect they might have a little more room, and probably a butler or two each.
She was also responsible for saving a crew in the ARC which I think was in 2006 the same year as us, details here and quite an interesting read
Will pop over tomorrow to see if they have any spare sikaflex as I just ran out, I’m sure they will help out 😉
Wednesday saw the weather change for the better, we have had 2 straight days of sunshine now, it was 36 in the cabin this morning, I put the awnings up and the temp dropped a few degrees. We are taking it easy at the moment, Kathy has started typing up her blog. She has a Laptop running a strange operating system, it has a wavy flag and lots of confusing icons, I accidentally found a way to make it look like an old fashioned windows computer, but it keeps changing back to a weird thing where it has lots of blocky square icons over the screen, none of which seem to be much use. Also whenever you get a program open like the photo-manager, none of the buttons do what you would expect, plus it spends a lot of time throwing up boxes reminding you to update this and that, can’t see how it will ever catch on 😉
The bow sprit was collected on Monday and work is under way to replicate it, Tuesday we headed off for a drive to replenish stores, and also to drop off the mainsail with the sailmakers so that can be replicated too. We popped into Cholomark, a local company that makes RIBs (Rigid bottomed Inflatable Dinghies), our current dinghy is just a bit too small and flimsy. I’m expecting that once we get out into the pacific islands, we will need to be ferrying food, water and fuel to and from the shore to our boat via dinghy, so it’s worth getting something decent.
2.9m Hypalon dinghy
Sadly that means a few thousand pounds flying out the door, plus I think our 2.5hp motor will be too small, so another whack for a 5-8hp replacement.
Today was spent doing small jobs around the boat, not a lot is going to happen now until the bowsprit returns, as we can’t take the boat out without it. So on Monday I baked some bread, which worked out quite well, will do a bit more over the weekend.
On a closing note, you can always hear a snack, crackle and pop sound when in the boat, it’s coming from the hull outside under the water, and can be quite loud at night. I’m not precisely sure what causes it, but I’m sure it’s related to the marine growth on the hull. It’s either the growth growing or the fish nibbling on it, or both. There’s no shortage of nibbling fish here as the video clip below shows.
I am having trouble getting video clips to upload, so I have done this in a roundabout way, hopefully it still works.
What a productive day, up at 6:30, just as it was light, but feeling tired I decided I could sleep another hour, but I quickly checked the weather grib for today. It showed me that we could expect 20 knt winds for several days, and that right now we are in the middle of a depression. That meant I needed to take advantage of the current calm wind, so up and out I went.
First off I needed to get the headsail off, I pulled the sail out, let go of the halyard, and it shot down, just a little too quickly, I think it might have been better to leave the pulpit on for this, as some of the luff shot over the side and just dipped into the sea. Still it was raining anyway, so no big deal. I rolled up the sail on the pontoon, I hadn’t realised that the wet teak pontoon would leave marks on the sail, I’m hoping they will wash out.
Next up I needed to haul the mainsail up so I could check the boom angle for the sailmaker. I also wanted some pictures of it. That went very well and I could haul the sail nearly all the way up without the winch. I think my shoulder is healing well now.
Down with the mainsail and flaked ready to slide out of the boom bag and into a sail bag. Next was the bit I dreaded, getting the furling gear/stays off. I slackened the backstay and rear intermediaries (the ones that support the staysail stay), Then I took the spinnaker halyard and tied it to the end of the bowsprit and winched it very tight. Then the forestay was slack enough to remove from the cranse iron (The metal thing at the front of the bowsprit where all the stays connect). The furler was carefully moved along side the boat and secured.
The Staysail stay/furler was next and this was even easier. I tied this on the other side of the boat. Next the whisker and bobstays all came off. I tied them all together with a bit of rope which I brought back to the Samson post, just to keep the stays out of the water. Now all we had left was the metal plate holding the sprit down, this came off a relatively easily, but did require Kathy to go into the chain locker and hold a spanner on the nuts underneath. Together we managed to undo all 4 bolts, I had to tape the spanner to a length of wood so Kathy could reach the nuts, and a couple of the nuts are somewhere amongst the rope and chain in the locker, and need retrieving later.
Finally the sprit was free to come out, however I expected it to be glued down to the deck with the 3M sealant used liberally on these boats during production. I increased the tension on the spinnaker halyard and was amazed to see the sprit lift clear of the deck. Jumping ashore I was able to wiggle the sprit out of the Samson post, I did try to lift it ashore but got half way there and realised it was too heavy, this was the only awkward point, I’m holding the bowsprit on the dock, it’s no longer connect to the boat and I’m struggling to stop it sliding into the sea. I had attached a line to it just in case it fell over. Over the years, with the help of Davey Jones, I have learnt to tie a line to anything I value when working on the boat. Despite this, I have lost two split pins and a small spanner to the aforesaid mans locker since yesterday. I managed to push the bowsprit back onto the boat and then I could lower it onto the pontoon over the side.
Next was the moment of truth, how bad was the rot, I expected it to be worse underneath, which had previously been hidden. Flipping the sprit over I could see that all the soft wood was rotted, I haven’t inspected it too closely, as it was now pouring down, but I could see enough damage to satisfy me that this exercise was worth it.
I suspect the sprit might have been strong enough for some time, but I will sell this boat one day and will need to have the sprit replaced before then, so while here, it seems sensible to get it sorted now. It’s now 4PM and I have cleaned up, washed the sprit and the deck down and called the carpenter to make sure they come early to take the sprit away.
Most of all I’m very pleased at how easy it all went, I’m reminded that even the most daunting tasks are quite manageable if you take a bit of time planning and thinking it all through.
On another note, I’m shocked at how quickly things rust out here. I think perhaps the reduced ventilation while we have been away may have helped, but for example, just look at our oven lighter after just 4 weeks
We need to go shopping today, meals so far have been comprised mainly of a loaf we bought in Cologne airport, a healthy branny thing that was hard as rocks when we bought it, and hasn’t changed much since ;-), just need the rain to abate a little.
We left the UK on Thursday afternoon, took a cheap EuroWings (Lufthansa’s version of Easyjet), to Cologne, spent the night there and then took a Eurowings non-stop 11 hour flight to Phuket, where a taxi was waiting to take us to the Marina and Sister Midnight. All in all quite a pleasant trip. I did lug a bag over with 23Kg of tools, spares, bearings, Epirb, tubes of special grease etc, and was gutted to see a load of customs guys turn up just 2 minutes before my bag came off the carousel, they decided to xray every single bag leaving the airport. Of course mine was picked out for a closer inspection. It seems the thing that made him suspicious was Kathy’s 4 bags of Alta Rica instant coffee, he had a good rummage and sent me on my way with a smile. I do like the people here.
It’s always a bit of a worry returning to the boat after a few weeks/months break, but I’m getting better at it now. It’s always possible to return to a mast sticking out of the water and no sign of the boat, I think it’s much worse if you can see the boat on the mud at the bottom of the marina. More likely you return to an infestation of mice, roaches or flies. I will never forget as a child turning up to our caravan which my parents kept on a farm near Ruthin in North Wales to find millions of dead flies covering every surface inside. Dad should have left the skylight open for them to escape, instead there must have been a mass breeding program in place. I worry as I don’t leave anything open on the baba as I don’t want any cockroaches, crawling or flying this way.
As it turned out the boat seems free of infestations and all was well. The batteries looked to be holding a decent voltage, but in fact there was a problem, but that could wait. The main thing is the bowsprit, I think I may have spent more time with this bowsprit than my children over the last year.
The problem is that I have rot in the sprit and I have arranged to have it taken away on Monday and to be replaced, with a new, very expensive teak copy. I have agreed for them to collect it on Monday and they have put two weeks aside to do the job. I have also decided use this period to get the mainsail replaced, with another estimate of 2-3 weeks for the new sail to be made.
So if everything goes to plan we will be completed and ready to sail at the end of January. The plan then is to take advantage of the NE Monsoon season and explore Phang Na bay while making our way south to Singapore. From there at the end of March we will most likely head north when the NE monsoon season ends and the winds move to the SW. We are either going to Japan, via Hong Kong and Taiwan, and then onto Alaska/Vancouver Island, or we will spend another year in this area, exploring the east side of Malaysia, the gulf of Thailand and Vietnam/Cambodia with trips to Brunei, Sabah & Sarawak on the Island of Borneo.
I have never removed a bowsprit before. Taking the sprit off means removing the wires that play a part in holding the mast up. Also the windlass (Anchor motor) has to come off. The bow platform and pulpit too. I got stuck in as soon as we had unpacked. Even though it was about 4 AM by my body clock I made good progress, Windlass disconnected, pulpit removed and anchor platform unbolted ready to go.
Tomorrow I’m hoping the wind will drop so I can remove the Yankee headsail before I disconnect the two furler stays, bobstay and whisker stays. I also need to get the mainsail down before the stays come off as I need to hoist it to check on some dimensions before it heads off to Rolly Taskers.
The crappy weather was actually a great help, it was relatively cool and the drizzle was refreshing.
Back to the batteries and I realised that the charger wasn’t keeping up now I had the fridge and other 12V devices powered up. On inspection the battery charger looked dead, and the power had been coming from the solar panels only. Not bad really, they had been enough to keep the boat happy while away. The battery charger was soon fixed, A corroded connecter in the mains supply panel was responsible. This was disappointing, I wonder how many other connections are like that. However As I explained to Kathy, these mains supply issues don’t really matter as they are only relevant when we are tied up and plugged in.
So I expect with the jet lag I will be up very early, which suits me, first light I want to get the bow sprit sorted, then I can relax.
I have lots of new toys to play with, the GoPro camera might provide some better videos, I have some radio toys (Pactor) to setup, and a new system to run the barbecue. So all good fun.
As promised, some more details and pictures of our trip to the more remote islands from Phuket. I hope it doesn’t take too long to load this page as there are a lot of pictures included. (Just found out the pictures are out of order on safari, but ok on Chrome ?!? )
Mainland Thap Lamu to the Similans
We arrived at Thap Lamu, a mainland fishing port, about 40 km north of Phuket as the day was ending, consequently we met the fishing fleet leaving for the evenings fishing. There were still a few dozen left in the port as we made our way up the estuary into the river.
The boats above catch their fish through trickery, well lets say advanced trickery, I suppose a hook is trickery. They shine very bright lights at the surface of the sea to trick the fish into thinking it’s dawn so they swim to the light for a spot of breakfast and find themselves ensnared in the net.
Below you can see the lights when I zoom in. I had often seen bright lights when out night sailing, but it was interesting to see them close up. As we sailed through the night a few days later we saw these boats again, they take up station on fixed moorings in a long line parallel to the coast. Rather than anchor, they have giant mooring buoys, made up of some kind of plastic tanks in netting, secured to something in 20-30 metres of water. At first I wondered what on earth these buoys were, they look like big rocks from a distance.
The next morning we woke to a beautiful dawn in the river, before we headed out to Koh Similan, an island some 8 hours sailing/motoring away.
As we left, we headed into the fleet returning from their night’s fishing. Fishing boats tend to take the shortest route from A to B when not fishing, and when fishing, they are often on autopilot and the captain may not always be giving 100% of his attention to the possibility of a little sailing boat being in his way. However I got some good advice from a local mariner who pointed out that the Captain and crew are usually on a high going out and coming back, and tend to be alert, it’s the rest of the time you need to be careful. So we dodged their boats as we left, under the eye of a big Thai navy frigate that was returning to the naval base at the mouth of the river.
Ko Similan Ko, or Koh Similan is the eighth of nine islands in the Similans chain. Similan actually means nine, so there’s a bit of confusion there. Locals calls the islands by their number. Ko Similan, like all the islands is surrounded by coral reefs, white coral sand beaches and exceptionally clear waters. The islands are part of the National park so strict rules apply to visitors. Fishing is banned around the islands so the fish are very tame and they’re in bucket loads, except you’re not allowed to put them in buckets.
Above you can see our approach to the island, the speedboats are carrying day trippers from Phuket and Thap Lamu, and possibly other ports. Each boat carries about 20 people, they stop, raft up to each other if the buoys are all taken, dump their passengers out the back into the sea for a half hour swim, honk the horn, get them all back on board and whiz around to the next island. I would have loved it as a teenager.
We were lucky and picked up a mooring buoy in about 15 metres of water, which felt quite close to the cliff face, but actually wasn’t when we looked from afar.
The next day we woke to find a film crew had taken over a rock on the cliff face next to us and were filming people jumping off the cliff into the sea. It looked very much like a soap or short film being made, but we later found out it was a commercial for a French bank. I’m hoping to keep a look out for this when it airs, as I’m sure we will be in the picture, possibly leaving my towels to dry on the rail might have affected their decision to have us in the background? we will see 😉
Above is a liveaboard dive boat, basically it has about ten passengers who live on board for a week, or two, they travel around different spots and anchor overnight, They also do night dives. I wish I could scuba dive, however this trip showed me you can do a lot with a snorkel if the fish co-operate.
I took this picture below, which was the first I have been able to take of the boat from a distance, sadly it’s quite a distance
A better picture of the boat as the sun sets.
We had two days there as once the day trippers leave (Above) it’s quite a peaceful place.
Ko Miang
Onto Ko Miang, Island number 4 (ish) and again we picked up a mooring buoy, Kathy is quite a dab hand with the boat hook now. You can see the large coral rock that the mooring is attached to. The rock is between 12 and 15 metres down, depending on the state of the tide. Visibility is incredible
Finally I get a picture of the boat looking peaceful
The view across the anchorage
From above
We stayed two nights here as well, this has to be my most ‘favouritest’ island yet, really simple, and quite unspoilt except for the rangers office and a small cafe that supports the tourists and the rangers staff. Mainly, snorkelling with the fish was a revelation, it really was like swimming around in a very well stocked tropical aquarium. Every kind of coloured fish you could imagine, all very tame, they would swim up to your face, look at you, swim around and come back for another look. all sizes and shapes too, some a few feet long, others miniscule. I also saw my first sea snake thing, with black and red stripes along its length.
It wasn’t an easy climb down from the top of the hill.
Looking down into 15 metres of water, the fish don’t have the vibrant colours you see underwater.
Ko Racha Yai After the second day the weather looked like it might change and give us more northerly winds, so we left for Ko Racha Yai, an island south of Phuket, again, clear waters, but this island is more developed with a luxury hotel on the waterfront. It was a good slog across, but we got the sails going and made good progress.
It was a long journey, and we opted to do it in one go as an overnight passage, the first we had done on this boat. We have done enough before, but people strongly advise against it here, due to the amount of small fishing boats and fishing marks, fish farms etc, often unlit. However we plotted a course that kept us well offshore in very deep water, so the risk was greatly reduced. As it turned out we only had one close encounter with another boat or object, and that was a rude fisherman who cut us up early the next day, after the sun was up. Kathy was on the helm, I was asleep and she called me up, we were on a collision course, due to collide within ten minutes, we were sailing with all three sails up, he was not fishing, but heading home, so we had right of way, yet he made no attempt to change course, we ended up doing a 360 deg turn about 200 metres away from him and slipped behind him, no big deal really.
By the time we arrived the wind had picked up and was starting to batter us on the nose, so it was a relief to drop into the bay, and despite scores of day trippers and dive boats, we found a mooring buoy right away. It would later turn out that that mooring belonged to the resort boat so we were very politely kicked off when their boat returned, but by then, most of the day trippers had left so we easily found another buoy, closer to the beach, so we could row ashore and save all the flapping with the outboard engine.
Now I had been fishing on every leg of the passage ( not in the parks of course) and had caught nothing, however I think the fish took pity on me and one threw himself onto the deck during our night passage, most considerate of him/her, also it did the honour of suffocating itself so I didn’t have to do any killing. It made a lovely sandwich later. I’m now reading a book on how to fish, I have learnt some fishermen knots, but I think there’s more to the problem than the knots I have been using.
Later we rowed ashore and explored the island, we also had a lovely dinner in a restaurant built onto the side of the cliff. Lovely.
Ko Racha Yai Beach with floating pontoon where we tied up our dinghy
Ko Rang Yai The weather was now getting worse, not so sunny, winds moving to the north, which is where we had to get to, and increasing to 25knots, so we pushed off early the next day and headed up to the NE of Phuket, the plan being to stop somewhere half way to the marina, I looked on the charts and saw a beach with protection from the north and a wine glass symbol, so that basically met both our needs 😉 Off we went. Ko Rang is privately owned, and is where they grow pearls, it has a bar and restaurant, and a lovely beach. It is also surrounded by shallow coral shores, so we had to be careful when anchoring not to damage the coral. It was a lovely spot, and a very protected spot, despite the sea getting a bit rough just half a mile either side of the beach anchorage. We had a great walk around the island which is covered in coconut trees and palms along with banana trees.
A day tripper boat with maybe 100 passengers come for lunch and a snorkelGetting the kids ashore
Great crab patternsStaff houseYou are here
From there we left the next morning for a 4 hour trip back to the Marina, we arrived a day earlier than planned, so we dropped the hook near the marina entrance in 6 metres of water. I was curious to see how it was, and it was just wonderful, so peaceful, not a ripple. It’s possible to anchor there for free and dinghy into the marina for a few Baht each day and use their facilities. Something that might be handy one day.
Finally we moved back to our berth and started packing up. Yesterday, we hired a car to do some Christmas shopping at the famous Phuket weekend night market. That was great, but on the way we spotted a giant supermarket/warehouse for supercheap, a local version of 7-11. This place was massive and was very much lidl style, but without any organisation. ‘Stack em high’ was the principle, but, ‘not in any particular order’ was also in play. Combine this with no english signage, and it made for a lot of fun traversing the aisles. I have attached a stack of pictures below to show what I mean.
They love their carnation milk here.
Flour (for Tim)
Retired flour
More Flour
Dried fish
Wet Fish
Eggs galore
Hairy coconutsBirdcages and bananas
On the way to the night market we saw this guy with a truck load of teddy bears, most surreal.
Kathy will tell a more interesting story of our trip, once she gets home and has some time.
We arrived back in Phuket Yacht Haven last night, but we decided to anchor outside the marina and save a few pennies, it also meant we could pick our time to go in the following morning at ease.
So this morning we motored a few hundred meters into the Marina to our old berth, where I found the neighbours dinghy blocking our entrance. What had once seemed like a wide entrance down between the pontoons didn’t look so big all of a sudden, also I couldn’t go ahead and turn around as we were not long after low water and it’s only a few feet deep there. I reversed a bit but couldn’t get a great angle to get into the berth by the time they had moved the dinghy, so the flooding current took control and once again swung us the wrong way. No problem in the end and we got a line ashore and tied up, whilst providing free entertainment to the onlookers.
We overnighted at Kho Ranga Yai on the way up here, its got a lot of coral around it and when we returned to the boat, I could see how far the tide had receded and exposed the coral, we ended up having to carry the dinghy, then the outboard across all of this, almost to the boat.
We have been at sea anchoring each night, sometimes getting a mooring buoy in the national park bays for 11 days now, a good test of the systems. The solar and wind generators did well, we can go three days without needing top up from the engine for electricity, this will improve when I get the new solar panels. We will post pictures of these last few journeys as soon as possible, now we have to focus on getting the boat tidied up ready for our return to the UK on Monday.
There are so many different names on the maps and charts for this place I’m not really sure what it’s called.
Heres the track of today’s passage, 5 knots wind on the nose in a millpond like sea, very pleasant, however the wind picked up as a squall arrived near the end, and it’s still drizzling now at 19:30. We are at anchor up a little river, opposite what is supposed to be Thailand’s biggest fishing port. Will put pictures up when I get some power for the MacBook.
Tomorrow we leave early for Ko Similan, I’m a bit apprehensive as we need to pick up a scarce mooring, and the dive boats will beat us there and take them all. Failing that we have to anchor in 15-25 metres of water. I do need to be able to do this, as it won’t be the first time, but that’s very deep, I have to put out 125 metres of rope and chain worst case, and consider a swinging circle of some 200m. Should be fun.
Just a quick update as we are sitting at anchor here in ban Khan, I think, and we have a slow 4g data connection.
we left the Yacht Haven late yesterday morning, had a peaceful overnight anchor stop near port chalong, then onto here today. Tomorrow we head further north to a little inlet at Ban Thap Lamu, near the Burmese, Myanmar border for an overnight stop before going west out to the similan islands , where we will stop for a couple of days. This is supposed to be a great spot for snorkelling, and we both just bought new snorkels to try.
The weather is still trying to make up its mind, as you can see below there are still some spectacular squalls passing through, but I think this week might see an end to it all.
The main job this week was to get the visas extended, however the new sails were finished on Tuesday, so I combined a trip to the immigration office in Phuket town with a trip to Rolly Tasker’s sail loft.
First the immigration office was very busy, and after a bit of flapping with photocopies, passport type pictures and initial paper checking we were ready to get a ticket and join the queue, just then the power failed and we were told to come back in the afternoon and join an even bigger queue. So off we popped to the sail loft.
The sails looked great, I particularly enjoyed seeing them folded up perfectly. Something you can never really do on a boat cruising, as there’s never that much space, either on the boat or dockside.
This is the Yankee pictured above, clew on the bottom left. It’s massive. I have no idea where the term Yankee originated, but it’s quite an old term, as this type of setup I have with the front headsail flying from the tip of the bowsprit is a very traditional arrangement, not usually seen on modern boats.
This headsail has an adjustable leech line and foot line, I have no idea why it has a foot line, perhaps it will become obvious when I start sailing with it. The Leech line goes up to the head and back down the through the luff, as you cant reach the clew from the deck, it flies so high.
After the sailmakers we headed over to AME at the boat lagoon to get bits and pieces. I have read enough from the anchoring book to feel confident that I have to have a nylon snubber in my anchor setup, and that it can’t run from the anchor platform roller, in a F8 the twisting forces on the bowsprit are massive, also without a snubber, the chain has no slack once you get to 35 ish knots of sustained wind, so the shock loads on the anchor and deck gear are excessive. I have decided to rig up a snubber that runs from the lower bobstay fitting at the waterline, for 5 meters to the chain. I have sketched the theory below.
The snubber line cost me some £40 in bits, I bought a proper chain grip like this one, which is designed to hold the chain properly.
This design looks the part, but after reading my anchoring book, I found out this puts a lot of stress on the link it pulls on, and when calculating loads in the overall anchoring system, from, holding power, to breaking loads on chains, it really is a case of knowing ‘your weakest link’. Sorry about that 🙁
From the chandlers, back to immigration, and we were relieved to see the traffic lights working again on the way, hopefully meaning the power was back. Not so relieved to see scores of people queuing outside the office, but it seems that was for something else. We got in the extension queue and only had about 8 people ahead of us, so after an hour or so and we were done. The man ahead of Kathy had overstayed by two days, and received a heavy fine, as he got the passport back, the immigration officer told him that next time he saw him, he might give him a ten year visa, when the man looked at him a bit confused, the officer said quietly, “for your prison stay” and then waved him away.
From there we headed out to a beach overlooking Chalong bay for a drink and rest.
Then onto the west coast via a cross country route we hadn’t used before. I had a lovely swim at Kata beach as Kathy watched the sunset;
We then popped into Patong town for some shopping and then home.
On Monday we set sail for ten days, before coming home. Im thinking we will head up towards Myanmar, and look at the NW coast of Thailand, we can do Phang Na bay on the way south in January. I have agreed to get the bowsprit replaced in January as well, so it’s going to be busy then.
L
