Author: paulcollister

Firs off, I keep getting this message on my phone. Any Thai readers out there?

So after the trip to the Soi Dog home, I had a lazy Tuesday, Wednesday was spent planning the work, and reading a big book about anchoring, I never thought you could fill a book on this subject, but so far I have read a third of the book, and we still haven’t got to the anchoring bit. Fascinating learning the history of Anchors, Chain, Windlasses etc, well at least I think so. For example, “The bitter end” is very much an anchoring term that found its way into common use.
Yesterday and today I got stuck into fitting the all the new kit onto the boat. I modified the old anchor bracket on the stern to fit the new kedge anchor. Then I attached the new lifebuoy with it’s hi-tech fancy LED light that turns on when it hits water. My old one used to turn on when it was the right way up, as a spring and gravity comprised the switch, however in a big sea, the boat would sometimes ride up on a wave quickly and the light would come on briefly making us jump in the cockpit as if a searchlight had been shone on us.  I also repaired the life-sling and its case as it had some UV damage. Just need a danbouy to complete the safety gear. The new fenders now hang, looking very smart.

I also restocked our flare container and removed the oldest flares. Once the stern of the boat was sorted, it was up the mast to fit a new halyard, put the missing screw into the wind sensor, and recalibrate it.

The new green halyard is there for emergencies really, but can be used for various things like holding up a canopy, climbing the mast, or swinging small children around.

I also replaced the blocks (pulleys) on the spreaders which are used to fly the visiting flags, or courtesy flags as they are called, along with their halyards. These halyards hoist other flags and pendants as well, like signal flags, should I ever need to “expect anyone to do their duty”. Protocol says you must fly a little flag for the country you are visiting when you hit their waters. Flag etiquette can get quite confusing, I have a club flag for the Cruising Association, and I still can’t work out where to fly it, every position on the boat has a status and priority, club ensigns should be flown from the top of the mast, something thats hard to do on a sailing boat, flying it on the port spreader is a no no, and to demote it to a lower status than the courtesy flag, flown on the starboard side is also a no no, so I’m up for suggestions. I have never met anyone from the flag police, but I’m told the are a serious bunch, not to be messed with 😉
I fixed the staysail furler, which I had trouble with when I lost the staysail over the side. When I had re-hoisted, after recovering the lost halyard, I had put a twist before the twist preventer at the top of the furler. This had now become off centre, but was easy to fix. Just need a sail to put on there now.

Preventers
Skip this if you don’t know what a preventer is, but basically it stops the boom flying around doing damage when you the wind catches the wrong side of the mainsail. It can be very destructive, to the crew and the boat.
To answer Tim’s comment, I have a dutchman system which is a combination of Kicking Strap/Vang (UK/USA names) and also acts as a preventer. This has worked well so far, I need to tune it better, but this is fine for daytime runs, in lighter winds, were it’s unlikely for the boom to hit the water. The main worry about the Dutchman is that it attaches to the boom around the midpoint, so if you roll on a fast run, and a bit of mainsail hits the water, the forces on the boom can be quite strong, and I have heard of booms snapping at the centre point because of this. So for this reason I have gone for a belt and braces solution that allows me secure the end of the boom as well, in a more traditional manner. After consultation with members of the baba internet group, and reading up on other ideas, in particular one by Brion Toss, I have implemented, or started to, a system that should prove useful.

First I had to learn how to do a eye splice in braid on braid rope, as you can see I need to work on this a bit more. But I can see now, how once I get a proper fid, and take a little bit of time to mark my cuts properly, then it should be a doddle.
So basically I have a strap around the end of the boom, and on each side a line of rope runs from this to the end of the boom near the gooseneck connection at the mast.
The strap is there to spread the load around the boom, rather than have it focused on a couple of pop rivets, or self tappers that would normally hold a pad eye on. The eyes at the mast end allow me to hook them onto a cleat like prong, which I will fit later, once I have made the eyes proper. Another little trick is some elastic will be sewn into the outer braid that will cause the lines to contract and stay snug on the cleat/prong.
These lines aren’t enough on their own to do much, but a second line, made of 12mm 3 strand nylon runs from near the cockpit,  

up to the forward hawse pipe, out over the side and back to the stanchion just aft of the mast, or most aft stay.

here it is clipped to the stanchion with a carabiner.

  So I have a line either side of the boom, and a line running the length of each side of the boat.
To operate the preventer, you walk to the mast, unclip the eye from the boom and attach it to the carabiner on the stanchion on that side, retire to the cockpit and tighten. I haven’t tried it yet, and I don’t know if I can leave them both connected at the same time, or if I need to go to the mast if I want to Jibe. we shall see. The nylon is designed to put some elasticity into the system, so the shocks if the boom hit the water can be absorbed a bit easier. I need to do proper eyes, and the elastic bit, but the system is good to go for now, so I will test it in a few days time when we head out. Also, the line not in use, which I intend to call the ‘Lazy Preventor’ can be used  as a forward stay for a poled out genoa, when running.

As I write this now, there are two converging thunderstorms heading right at us. The sky is full of lightning and I have unplugged all the aerials, Im expecting one heck of a storm.

Last night we sat in the bar here and I had a coconut, which is really nice, don’t know what took me so long. Also it looks like a little house or tent, which is nice.

Today we walked around the back streets of the village and made friends with some local kids. They were so sweet, they practiced their english on us, which amounted to  “Hello, What is your name” “My name is…” , which was great for such young kids, much better than my Thai so far. When they left us the older girl shouted to us “We love you” which was wonderful. The people here are very kind and generous, probably my favourite country so far.

Tonight we checked out a local Thai eatery down on the waterfront just a few minutes walk from the Marina. Excellent, cheap and delicious.

 

Paul C.

The King’s passing

We found an English language radio station that explained a bit more about the king Bhumibol Adulyadej mourning arrangements yesterday. I had wondered if Thailand was the first country I had visited that didn’t have pop music on FM, but it seems all the stations have restricted their output to sombre chanting and readings. The only exception being music that the king was directly connected to. Apparently he was quite an accomplished musician, along with many other talents, like sailing and sport in general. Next week the 14th Nov marks the end of the initial 1 month mourning, and entertainment venues, stations and organisations are able to resume activities, however they have mostly decided to wait until the end of January when the 3 month mourning mark is reached. The mourning period, which I thought was set at one year, was referred to today as ‘one year minimum’. It’s hard to imagine such a thing happening back home. Even when our queen goes, it won’t be anything like this.
All government offices and most businesses have tributes to the king set up at their entrance, and the draping of black and white ribbons is everywhere.

Chandlery
I spent many hundreds of pounds this weekend at the chandlers, and I still haven’t bought the expensive stuff yet. I can’t get a liferaft or Offshore Danbouy here. That’s one of the worst bits about yachting, the very expensive stuff that you don’t want to skimp on, should, if you do the rest right, never get used. Best to think of it as insurance, however I have made some good claims on my insurance in the past, like getting a new iPhone when I dropped it in the lake, so that doesn’t seem so bad. I’m about to put a £3000 liferaft in the bin, that has never been used. Not to mention hundreds of pounds worth of flares that are way past their sell by date.
Still I have a lot of new running rigging (ropes to pull the sails up), new signal halyards and blocks, and a lot of ropes and fittings from which I’m going to build a fancy boom preventer system with. basically this is a system that stops the boom flying around and knocking your head off. I also have a good complement of new flares and other safety gear on board. The new fenders I bought look great, just disappointed to have just received an email from a UK chandler offering them at half price this morning. A new dinghy pump and PVC repair kit were added to the bag, Finally I picked up an anchor and a few metres of chain to use as a kedge and hang off the back of the boat, this gives me three anchors and 200 metres of rode in total, so that should do for now.

Buddhas (Wat Chalong)
After the chandlers and the rope manufacturers it was on to the Wat Chalong buddhist temple. 
From the temple we headed over to the Naka Night market, which is a huge, mostly covered, market with stalls selling everything you would expect, t-shirts, caps, fabrics, tourist stuff, and it seemed to be a popular destination for day trippers heading over by the coach load from the western side of the island. Every now and then you would here a tannoy shouting for ‘shirley to hurry up as the coach is about to depart’. There was a great selection of food on offer, and we both enjoyed snacks

Finally a trip to central market on the way home, this is the only food market/mall we haven’t seen on the island, and we needed some groceries, so we had a look. It turned out the food hall was actually owned by Waitrose, so on the plus side, we bought some lovely fresh bread, and other rare European items, but also left a lot of basics out because of the high prices.

Sunday we headed off to look at the western side of the rain forest here. This is where the gibbons are released, but further in than we would go. We couldn’t find the animal sanctuary we were looking for, but did find some interesting places over run and quite wild. We ended up at the Ton Sai waterfall, which was great. Sadly Kathy really did find herself in room 101 this time with the attack of the giant millipedes, and leeches dropping on her. I expect she might mention this in her blog later 😉

 

A Rubber plantation

Not sure what happened her, but this was at the end of a road, and I had to drive down the steepest hill I have ever seen to get here. As we approached the hill down to this spot, the road disappeared in front of me, I really couldn’t see the road until the car was so steeply angled that there was no way I could reverse back. So in for a penny.., down we went. The only comparison I could think of was the big dipper, when you reach the top, you don’t realise just how steep the drop is until it’s way too late. I was praying there was another route out, as I couldn’t imagine our little hire car getting back up the hill. Of course it was a dead end.

Before I returned the car, we had time to visit the Soi Dog foundation, they do very good work for stray dogs and shockingly, dogs rescued from the meat trade, it’s quite a thriving business shipping dogs north to Vietnam where they come to a terrible end. Kathy will post more on this I’m sure.

Finally, although it seems like there is very little boating activity going on, we are waiting for the sun to come out, then we are heading off to explore the local area. I have now heard a lot of local people mention how this year has been the worst in living memory for rain, frequency and amount, and how the monsoon season is running late. The weather has us down for clouds and rain all week, with shockingly low temperatures of 27c on some days.
I will spend this week finishing off the refit of the boat, I checked on the sails and they are in production now, and might be ready next week.  The bigger plan is developing, my current thoughts are to aim for Seattle USA for next August. This means leaving here in February and heading to, Malaysia, Singapore, possibly the Philippines, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, then the interesting bit for me, the Aleutian islands. It’s a lot to fit into one year and presents a lot of challenges, so I’m doing research on winds, currents etc. Anyone who is reading this and thinks it sounds hard, it’s not hard at all, I have been following one family via their blog for a long time now, and they left for world cruising with babies and are still going strong, do check out their blog, they are a great example of how to just get on and do it. Here is a huff post article about the family.

 

Paul C.

 

 

It’s been a lazy week,  I have been researching where best to get bits for the boat, and I think I have found some good suppliers locally for various items. I had the bowsprit measured for a replacement, along with various other teak jobs I’m considering. The weather started off quite grey and wet earlier in the week but by today it looked like the monsoon season had left us, however we had a big storm this evening, so maybe not quite yet. I managed to get a couple of coats of varnish down despite this. We are also tackling little jobs here and there like cleaning behind the cooker,

and reading up on possible destinations, for when the weather improves. We plan to spend a couple of weeks cruising around Phang Nga Bay where there are scores of lovely little islands, one where they filmed a bond movie.

We had a little walk through the village here and I saw a very tall coconut tree

And we found a shop that sold bananas, they might also sell ghekos, given how many they had.

I’m going to try and link some higher res pictures in to the normal ones, so if you click on them it should show a higher resolution image, but I’m not sure how this works, so bear with me. These pages may be slow to download, but you should be able to zoom in once you have clicked on the image.

Firstly, our marina yesterday when it was a lovely hot sunny day.

 

Now some clickable images

The storm appears in the distance

Getting closer

Just before the rain hits us

All viewed from the safety of the bar, where we watched an amazing lightning show that lasted an hour. Who needs TV!

 

Paul C

I hired a car for the weekend so we could explore the island further. Phuket is not a massive island, but takes over an hour to drive from the top to the bottom. Saturday started with a trip to the boat lagoon, on the way we popped into HomePro, a very clean sparkling version of B&Q, / Home Depot. I wanted some little brass/copper nails but despite checking at various hardware stores around, the island has yet to yield up it’s store. HomePro was no better. It’s a bit like the banana thing, we have failed to buy any from a shop so far, in fact when asking for them in shops we generally get a polite giggle in response. Is it because they grow on trees everywhere, is it a bit like going into a greengrocer in the UK and asking for leaves. Anyway the boat lagoon is the centre of the yachting scene here in Phuket, there are two marinas there, plus lots of hardstanding, travels hoists, workshops and chandlers. I didn’t like the place at all, the lagoon itself is a dredged pond, someway inland from the sea and looked very muddy and stagnant. The surrounding buildings where very much of an 80’s style, concrete functional food/yachtie supply orientated. Lots of super-yacht type people paying over the odds for espressos. and a gang of charter companies and their suitcase dragging customers making their way to and from their week in paradise. However the chandleries were a delight, the main one, East Marine was very posh, selling turnbuckles you might use on 3/4 inch wire, and a less posh and cheaper AME marine selling everything at a good price. They welcomed me in when I said I had a long list, they apologised that they couldn’t offer me a coffee as East marine do, but filled my hand with little sweets instead. I think they will get my business. I have a few thousand dollars to spend here, life buoys, danbouys, safety lights, fenders, kedge anchor, chain, rope etc etc.
While I was getting over excited at the range of shackles and hose clamps on offer, Kathy had popped around the corner to the supermarket specialising in stuff only richer yachtie/westerners would buy. She was made up, they had frozen veggie stuff, and marmite and things she hasn’t seen since her last trip to Tesco in Liverpool. I actually found two types of alcohol free beer, both German so I’m not expecting much, but worth a try. I suspect we will be here again.
From Boat Lagoon we headed north to a nature park with a Gibbon rescue centre. This was very interesting, and a young lady volunteer from London explained the horrific story that some of these Gibbons have been through, and how it may seem cute to have your picture taken at the beach with a baby Gibbon clinging to you, but if you knew just how many gibbons were killed to get that one baby you would be very shocked. Also once it stopped being a cute baby, it would meet a horrible end. In the meantime drugs are injected into the little Gibbons to keep them manageable for tourists. Very very sad that trade, and it was wonderful that there is a place here helping them and trying to re-introduce them into the wild. They have become extinct in Phuket due to hunting, and sadly many of the rescue ones are beyond rehabilitation, so will live their days out in the centre here.

From the Gibbon centre we walked up the path further into the forest where there is a waterfall.

Lots of people seem to come here to picnic and cool off in the water. I’m glad we came after there had been lots of rain, I am fed up of waterfalls without water, I’m thinking Nidri and the last one in Malaysia.

From the nature reserve we headed over to the the beaches on the west side, these are very nice, lovely sand, not too commercial and a decent array of vendors nearby so you won’t starve.

We drove down the coast heading for the fleshpots of Patong, curious to see how bad these places are when the sun sets, and also to stock up at the big C supermarket here. We had a nice Indian/Thai dinner at a beach restaurant, followed by a walk along the beach in the dark. Then back to the car via Bangla Street. I had heard this street was an evil place to visit, but I found it most pleasant. Everybody seemed to be into sport, for just a few baht we could watch a game of table tennis, or ping pong as they seem to call it. Also lots of young ladies were keen for us to have a drink with them, for just 80 Bhat, most reasonable. I did notice a glaring mistake at the end of the street, where the sign for the Hard Rock Cafe seemed to got the words all mixed up, I expect they must feel a bit silly about that.

Back home to the boat and on Sunday we headed on down to Phuket old town for the street market. Unfortunately I got the times wrong, so we arrived as it was setting up, still it was very pleasant walking around the streets, the place reminded me of Penang in architecture, and it turns out it was founded as a tin mining town in the 19th Century, and the wealthy merchants from Penang setup here to take advantage of this trade, and they brought their ways with them. It seems Penang was almost as easy to work with back then as Bangkok was, but then the borders between Malaysia and Thailand have been quite flexible. One taxi driver I had in Langkawi was Thai, I asked how long he had been there, he said ‘600 years, and don’t get me started’ so I didn’t.

After Phuket old town, we drove north to Sarasin bridge, that links the island to the mainland, there are lots of stalls there and it’s a nice spot to watch the sunset, but we were a bit late for that, still I enjoyed walking around the stalls, and being laughed at when asking for some bananas again.

This week I’m doing boat jobs, the sails are being made now and I need to find a liferaft and get the bowsprit work started.

Kathy has more interesting details to follow soon.

Paul C.

 

First off apologies to the little girl twins I had down as boys in the last post. Apparently you can tell their sex just by looking at them, so Kathy says.

Yesterday I hired a car and took the sails down to Rolly Tasker, the sailmaker. Apparently it’s the largest sail loft in the world, not just Asia

We laid out my two headsails and the Genoa was declared “dead on arrival”, no debate, but not a bin job, apparently I can get good money for it here. It seems some of the day trip sails that happen here for tourists, motor out, then a sail is hauled up for a while, even though the operators of the trip know nothing about sailing, they need sails, the sail flaps a bit, usually wears itself out quickly and then they drop it. So I’m informed they will buy my sail off me, Rolly Tasker will put some tape over the rips and away you go.
The Staysail, was inspected, I pointed out my repairs to it, and was told ‘not to give up my day job’ I had hoped for, ‘very well done sir, that’s one of the finer repairs we have seen here’ but at least he was honest. So that’s going to be re-repaired as the cloth is in decent condition, and is good as a spare,we can save cash by having a lightweight UV protection, as it will be in its bag most of the time. A new Genoa and staysail will be ordered, assuming the quotes are reasonable.
Next were the two sails from the v-berth locker. Thanks to Tim for reminding me about them, the spare staysail with hanks, isn’t a full staysail, but a storm sail, which is a small and very strong sail used in a storm. It has never been used by the look of it, however it was designed to be hanked on to the stay, which wont work now as the boat has been converted to furling headsails. The sail is going to have loops with roller balls attached to make it clip over the existing staysail. This seems like a low cost and effective way to go, it’s also simpler, which is what you need in storm conditions. The other sail is a spare Genoa which was declared too baggy for upwind sailing, but with some repairs to the luff and leach would be fine as a downwind sail. We may be several weeks following the trade winds as we sail the pacific, so this type of sail is just fine.

So after the sail business we headed off to explore the Island a little

The west side of the island is where most of the tourists go, in particular Patong Bay, the most famous part of Phuket, often for not so great reasons. The west side has some lovely beaches, plus looking west usually gives the best sunsets. It’s very noticeably tourist town here, and although we found a great supermarket selling French breads I was glad to be heading back to the East and North coast. Of course you can’t consider me a western tourist because I hate all that ‘full English Breakfast, with a free pint of Guinness” stuff, so once we had some French sticks in the car, we headed off to Tesco and got some Brie and olives and headed home (english snob might be more applicable) 😉

On the way back, I spotted some more traditional markets inland, selling mostly food and staples for the local people. We had a great time wandering these aisles full of things I have no idea what they are. Kathy found a vendor selling what looked like grubs and locusts, but they were marinated in a lovely looking sauce. I bet if I could get over my cultural conditioning they would taste lovely. They do say it’s the future!

I found a stall selling sheets & pillowcases, which was half the price of the same product in the mall we had visited earlier, and my suspicions that not many non-local people shop there was confirmed when the shopkeeper wanted to take a photograph of me buying the linen.

I had been apprehensive of driving here, but, being a sensible country that drives on the left, it was quite easy, just always assume that there’s a motorbike undertaking you and remember that people drive the wrong way on the hard shoulder if they only need to go a short distance.

Somebody stole my username/password and it’s up for sale along with loads of others on the dark web, I don’t know for sure, but suspect this was part of the yahoo hack. I only use this on non important sites, but I need to go and change my password on scores of sites now, so this has reminded me I was half way through writing a password app, iCloud based for the iPhone. I think I will have a go at that over the next few days while we have some chilling time here in the Yacht Haven.

Paul C.

 

Today and yesterday have been quite chilled. I’m working through the list of tasks outstanding, and getting an idea of prices before I hit the chandlers. Tomorrow we are hiring a car and we are going to take the headsails down to Rolly Taskers to get them measured for a new set. We got the sails off today, the genoa had a long rip in it I didn’t see, I’m going to ask if they can be patched up to keep as spares, but it may not make any sense if they are that weak. I’ve also decided to buy new awnings for the boat. There’s going to be a lot of money being spent over the next few weeks, but I’m treating it a bit like a trip to the dentist, best get it all over with and move on. I decided on the EPIRB I want, it has a ten year battery life, but it’s not available here, so Im going to buy it in the UK and bring it as carry on baggage when we come back, that’s going to be fun getting it through security.

We went for a walk to the local village today, we were lucky to miss the rain, every day for the last few weeks has been very wet and squally, the same is predicted for the next week.

At one point it became clear that we were going to get soaked so we jumped into a shack, which was half house, half shop and half restaurant.

I tried to buy some bread, but something was lost in translation and this nice lady cooked us an egg and banana roti (pancake type thing) and very tasty it was too.  I think she is showing me her grandson here.

 

Once back at the marina we settled down for a drink and some dinner at the deck bar 

Another squall came through, hopefully by November we will be into the NE Monsoon, which is the high season here with lots of hot dry weather.

Paul C.

After a couple of nights in the lovely Ao Po Grand marina, we paid the bill of £50 and motored off to our final destination this year, the yacht Haven marina.

We have 6 weeks before we head home for Christmas on the 5th of December, obviously I don’t mean Christmas is on the 5th, but I expect we will have to go shopping and stuff. We plan to spend the 6 weeks touring around Phuket, and possibly further north into Thailand. Phuket is the centre of sailing around these parts, at Ao Po there were scores of Sunsail and Moorings charter yachts, mostly big cats, which makes sense as the water’s quite shallow round here. Theres a stack of chandleries here so I can stock up on all the bits I need, also there is a large sail loft, the biggest in Asia, Rolly Taskers, where I can look at new headsails. I also will source a liferaft, and maybe a new dinghy. Plus I can look at getting a new bowsprit and anchor platform made here.
Once the squally weather ends, which hopefully will be in the next couple of weeks, we might make a few daysails around Phang Nga bay, I wont be happy until I catch a fish here and get to grill it outside on the barbecue.

So at 14:30 today we motored out of the marina, and over to the fuel dock. I took the opportunity to work out how to get the stern to tuck into the pontoon as we came along side the fuel dock. I didn’t do too bad, but again I couldn’t see what was going on, the bow line went ashore and was cleated, and I tried to power into that to get the stern across, but looked up to see the dock guy had undone the rope and was pulling hard to stop me going ahead. Anyway we filled up, 115 Litres, which make my consumption based on logged engine hours at 4ltrs/hour, which is a lot, much of the time the engine was only ticking over to charge the battery while we sailed. I need to investigate more.
At 5 knots, we should cover the 10 mile trip and arrive at the marina at 16:30, but we couldn’t make 5 knots into a 20 knot headwind, only 4.5, so that was going to put us there around 5pm, this is 2 hours after high water, when we have slack water. This matters a lot and was worrying me because the marina is located in the narrow strait that separates Phuket from the mainland. currents can flow fast and the Marina advise not to try to enter when this is the case, we are also on big fast tides right now (Springs) so even more worrying, also with a 15-20 knot wind on our side it could have been tricky.

Anyway in a big anticlimactic way, Kathy motored us into the marina, at slack water, and I took us into the berth, the stern was being dragged off the pontoon but I did some more practice, and this time managed to kick it in, once we got the bowline attached. It was even easier, as there was a nice man in a rib from the marina ready to push the boat into place if needed.

 

The marina is lovely, plus the wifi seems really fast so we might watch some UK Tv tonight, like “have I got news for you” if it’s on?
Both Thai marinas so far have been lovely, the staff here seem very keen to help. I think we are going to have a great time here.

Paul C.

 

 

At last we have arrived, it took a few days longer than expected due to a very active monsoon season. The Malaysian and Thai official weather sites said we should keep off the sea until next Wednesday, however their forecasts are for the high seas, and looking at the GRIB files I get, which show the expected wind, it didn’t look that bad inshore. However when we left yesterday morning, and cleared the headland we where being tossed all over the place and only able to make about 2 knots into the wind and waves, we could have hoisted the sails, but there were squalls all along the horizon, so we just did a U-turn and had a quiet day on the boat back at anchor. Big squalls blew through all day making me feel better about our decision to stay
Here is a track of our movements at anchor, you can see from the scale we need a good 200ft around us, but we don’t get that luxury, boats pile in all around and if they don’t swing the same as us, then we get quite close.

So this morning we checked the weather, the Thai forecast was a bit less doom-laden, and the sun was shining. I also realised we don’t need to go to the south of the island which is where you have to check in, I could go to the north and then get a taxi down south with the boats papers and get us checked in. This is the job first thing tomorrow so we can get visas and custom clearance. This fact made it easier to plot a course, with the wind going from the west to more southerly we could make Ao Po Grand Marina in one tack, close hauled. Also I knew the weather was going to improve and the sea state calm as we entered into Ao Phang Nga bay, which protects us from the big waves coming in from the storms out in the Andaman sea. So if we could get out of Phi Phi ok then ‘Things can only get better’. And so it was. Track below Thanks to Marine traffic for the track, the points were generated by my iPhone sending AIS updates in, you can see the bit where the battery went flat 🙁  I did have the track on the Navionics app, but that keeps crashing and losing the track. Considering this is my main chart plotter, that’s a little concerning. However it’s not that accurate anyway, paper charts are rubbish here so I use google earth overlays in OpenCPN, along with Navionics and the chart in the cockpit plotter, which came with the boat. It’s important to keep a good lookout anyway.
So with a reef in the main, and 75% Yankee, and 99%Staysail up, we romped along close hauled making between 5 and 7 knots all the way, which for those of you who don’t sail, is quite fast for a big heavy boat like this. With each hour the sea calmed more and the sky got sunnier. No rain all the way until the last minute as we approached the marina. I had furled up the staysail, and we were on a reach heading N between the two islands you can see on the map belowThe gap isn’t big here, also a good chunk of the coast on the left island has a large construction, like a fish farm, or possible foundations for a new marina. Anyway a massive squall popped over the coast on our left, there was no warning and it was one of the worst I have seen, 0 – 35 knts in seconds, I had no time to reduce sail and I knew I was going to be overpowered with the main and the headsail out and the wind from behind I worried I would be driven into one of the two islands, a few seconds later I was drenched, and visibility dropped. I tried to run with the wind, but it was too much so I was able to spill some wind by steering up to the fish farm, letting the main flap a lot and that slowed me down enough to steer safely, then dropping back into the squall for a minute and then heading up again. I quite enjoyed it actually, it’s much more fun than back home, where if this sort of wind starts in the Irish sea, it could be like that and get worse for hours,maybe days, plus it’s usually bloody cold there. Here I knew this would be over in minutes so just had to make the most of it. Sure enough the whole show only lasted 5 minutes, before the wind dropped a lot, but the rain increased and I lost all visibility. This is where the binnacle compass comes into it’s own. I just steered 20 deg knowing that would get me clear of land. A few minutes later and it’s very calm. so we put the fenders out, brought a mooring line I had just setup back on board, started the engine, dropped the sails and into the marina.

This is a lovely spot, and now we have power I have been able to get my macbook charged back up, hence this blog post, although it took a while, the boat was tripping the marina supply, this is down to the second AC outlet circuit on the boat. I presume somewhere water got into the sockets, which wont be hard to find, but it’s worrying that water is getting in at all.

Kathy will no doubt write a much more interesting blog shortly. In the meantime here’s some pics.

 

Paul C

Thursday 13 th

Today we checked out with customs and immigration in Telaga harbour. All very easy. However Chris informed us that the swaged fitting on the headsail stay was the wrong size for the furling gear, we could wait a few weeks to get a new one sent out from the USA, or pick one up later in the year on our way through, or get one swaged locally later that day, which meant missing our departure. I went for the latter option, and as it turned out we were able to use the stay we had, with a modification to the furling gear. This still meant a delayed departure, so for one evening, we were illegals.
Also I found that the dinghy stayed inflated, except for the floor, which isn’t essential. I can have a go at gluing that myself. Still I do fancy a nice new, bigger dinghy.
Another nice thing, or sad, depending on how nostalgic you are, is that contracts and money changed hands today for Lady Stardust, so she has a new owner. He bought her on spec and hasn’t even seen her yet.

Friday 14th
So with all shiny new rigging, we left Telaga. The plan was to go west to the group of islands with Koh Lipe at the southernmost tip. However it was hard going, the south west monsoon was mostly from WNW, so we had to tack upwind, this is not this boats strongest point of sail, and after the second tack it was obvious we weren’t going to get far. I had a reef in the main and the headsail half furled and the staysail all out. Some of the squalls were quite strong, 20-25 knots, and 2-3 m waves. Also it was worse on one tack than the other. I think this is because the mast isn’t tuned yet, in fact I think it’s leaning to starboard, like the boat itself.
Somewhere along this journey Kathy shouted out that the Genoa (headsail/jib) was in the sea. This perplexed me, as it’s quite difficult to achieve this. I was hoping she meant the sheets, but a quick look and sure enough the staysail is in the water not on its furling gear. You can’t actually see the sail easily from the cockpit as it hides behind the mainsail when beating upwind. So up to the bow to investigate.
First I had to get the sail back onto boat, as I was hauling it onboard I remembered watching Dame Ellen MacArthur doing a similar operation on the TV, however she was in tears, and took all day. I had mine back on board in a few minutes. Mind you she was in the Antarctic doing 40 odd knots, and her sail was the size of a small cricket pitch, whereas I’m having a pleasant time in the tropics, with a hankerchief size of a staysail, even so….
Anyway, back on board I could see the head attachment had ripped off, and the sail split down the luff behind the luff rope for a couple of metres. The sail had then lowered itself down the furler, popped out the bottom and over the side. No point in worrying now, I grabbed some rope and lashed it down to the deck to worry about later. I don’t have any spare sails on this boat, unlike stardust that had 3 of everything. Still with the stress on the rig so far, I know everything has been tightened up. I also found out why the swim ladder was removed, or at least another reason, with it lifted up out of the water, the headsail sheets can catch it and rip it off it’s mount, which they tried to do several times.
Soon after this I gave up trying for Koh Lipe and swung her around to sail off the wind over to the Lee side of Koh Tarutao, this isn’t very far north of langkawi, but was going to have to do for the day, we were relieved to get into calm waters and found a lovely spot near a jetti to anchor.
Lost my cap at some point today, so went for my spare, got two spares so all is ok.
I’m not sure if I have been in the med too long without tides, or I have a terrible memory, but I was surprised at how much this boat doesn’t care about the wind. Or should I say, how she doesn’t like to lie at anchor to the wind, and the current flowing has a massive effect. Consequently, a lot of the time the anchor chain is running under the bow, and making hideous sounds as it grinds away at the bob stay. I now run a long bit of nylon rode to an anchor hook I lower over the anchor roller, this takes the strain from below the water line.

Saturday
We make an early departure for Liang, in the rain and squalls, I had hoped to go further today, perhaps to Koh Rok , but I decide to be less ambitious. Again heavy weather, but I spend the morning in the cockpit repairing the broken sail. I manage a reasonable repair, but the weather is to heavy to think of putting it back on the furling gear, and I don’t want my delicate stiching to be flapping like crazy in the wind. The plan is to keep a turn on the furler all the time so as not to stress my repair.
We arrive at Liang late afternoon, anchored off a lovely beach, but rolly and still getting hit by squalls, but anchor worked well. I paid a lot for this anchor, but already I’m pleased at how it sets first time and doesn’t seem to budge once it’s in.
Lost my cap at some point today, so went for my spare, got a spare so all is ok.
Sunday 16th
Up early, need to push on and find somewhere sheltered to mop up and get my staysail back on. I love this staysail in heavy weather, it’s quite powerful, and with it being close to the mast it doesn’t have such ability to destabilise the boat as the big Yankee headsail can. In fact the Yankee headsail is more like a high cut Genoa, I like that too, it’s very powerful but difficult to furl in a blow for me with my knackered shoulder.
So Kathy takes the helm as I raise the anchor, a bit blowy but ok, then out of nowhere , or rather from around the headland, comes a mini squall of 30 knot winds with pelting hard rain, I can see Kathy working hard at the wheel trying to keep the boat moving forward while I raise the anchor, but within seconds she is drenched through, not a great start to the day. I don’t remember ordering such weather.
Again tacking into the wind is hard, normally I would hope to tack when my target is on the beam, but no chance as things stand, plus we make lots of leeway. I understand this boat class has won racing trophies, would like to know how, perhaps when it’s tuned and new sails are on it will point better.
Now it’s Kathy’s turn to mention the other thing I’m not mad on hearing, that water is coming into the boat, the way she says it makes me a little worried, it seems to be getting in from under the bunk at the side.
A difficult place to work as the water tank takes up this space, but I suspect it’s probably the water tank that’s the culprit, so I taste the water and sure enough it’s fresh. So next I have to dismantle the woodwork that somebody has added over the tank to make extra storage, they did a bad job and it’s on my list to fix one day. Then I can see that the water level gauge sensor is leaking, as the water sloshes around in the tank it’s squirting out the side of the sensor mounting flange, no big deal, I tighten it a bit, but suspect the gasket is shot. It can wait, we have loads of water and a second tank anyway.
So two long tacks and we arrive in a bay protected by Koh lanta. We anchor in 3 metres of water some way from the shore of Koh Po, nice and calm here, but grey and little squalls still pass through, but they just keep everything nice and damp ?

Monday 17th
Up early, I get the repaired staysail onto the furler while it’s calm. Then off to Koh Phi Phi and guess what, the weather is awful again. Loads of squalls, 20-25 knots of wind and rough seas. I tack out on starboard, heading away from phi phi towards Koh Rok as that’s the best I can manage in the headwind, then after several hours, maybe 5, I tack and head for phi phi. It was so calm at the start I didn’t bother with the reef in the main I had had so far, I was curious if the main would point higher without the reef, I also got both the headsails out and was pleased my repair is holding out. Of course that was the cue for Poseidon and his mates to have a go, 30 knots of wind, and a building sea and boy was that fun, I wondered how far we would heel, I also wondered if every stage in the new rigging had been tested and inspected. I’m afraid it rather bothered Kathy, who worried about me shouting to take the helm while I tried to quickly reduce the sail area out there. It took about ten minutes but it was all back under control and we were belting along. So far we have been doing about 7 knots close hauled at best, but generally about 6. We had to travel nearly twice the distance the crow flies and ended up arriving in the dark, another first for me with this boat.
The bay at Phi Phi Don is sheltered from the sea, but not the wind, it’s very deep and near the shore at 12m depth it is coral all the way to the beach. The trick is to anchor in mud just after the coral which can only be seen in daylight. We found a shallow bit some way from the shore, near the middle of the bay where all the work boats here race up and down, but by now they had finished for the day, so we dropped the hook in 13m of water, put out 60m of chain and called it a day!
Along the way, the waves and gusts took their toll, both lifelines snapped, port and starboard, the port signal halyard snapped, some diesel spilled from a Jerry can and washed along the deck into the cockpit, only a tablespoon or two, but that’s enough to make a right stink. The anchor locker door in the v berth flew open and ripped itself off the hinges, and the oil lamp unscrewed itself from the spot above the sink and spread itself around the boat in bits. Thank goodness it had no oil in it.
Oh and I lost my cap in one of the squalls, hope they sell caps in Thailand.

Tuesday, wake to survey what is supposed to be the third most beautiful island in the world, not impressed. Rammed with day tripper boats and long tails, these are boats used as taxis and general work/fishing boats. They look like they have an auto engine mounted on the rear on a frame up in the air, with a prop shaft about 20ft long sticking out the back, the whole thing pivots and that’s how they steer, a bit like an alternate design for an outboard. Will post pictures later.
I could see we were lucky coming in as local boats have mooring for the day trippers they use when dropping them off to snorkel on the coral. These moorings consist of a length of polypropylene rope floating on the surface which they get with a boat hook and tie to. Presumably they go down to an old engine block or something just as heavy, anyway we may have motored past or over a few in the dark, that could have been fun. Later we popped ashore in the dinghy, which worked out well, the outboard was reluctant to start and stay running, but got into it after a while. It’s on my list to give it a service. It’s actually a very lovely place and we will come back and spend more time here.

Wednesday 19th
Tried to leave, but the sea was very rough and 10 knots of wind on the nose quickly became 20. After 40 minutes and not much distance, I turned her around and headed back.

This is a pain, the forecast from the Thai government service gives us 25-30 knt winds from the west with 3.5m seas, but other sources say this is only for offshore areas, and here it is 10-15 from the Sw which would be great. Anyway, it seems the gov forecast was more true when we went out. Also we have had some tremendous squalls blow through here in the anchorage, had to start the engine for fear of hitting other boats as every one swung in very different directions.

I’m not sure when things will improve, we may have to wait a few more days.

Will try to upload pictures later, but my MacBook has flat batteries and I haven’t got round to fixing up a charger on the boat yet, so it’s difficult to do from my iPad, will try some anyway.

Paul C

Just a quick update. We are in Thailand now, but yet to check in at our port of entry, which is Phuket. We are anchoring at various islands/rocks en route. It’s taking a long time to get there as we can’t sail at night, there are far to many unlit fishing boats and nets, and the weather is against us, so we do 25 mile hops each day. Now we are in Koh Phi Phi , Koh means Island, and phi is pronounced pee, better know as the location of the file “the beach” with some guy called Leandro de capricious starring.

We did plan to leave tomorrow for Phuket but I just saw a forecast on the navtex saying small boats should stay ashore! The forcast I was working to, based on grib data from the GFS model made it look like a nice passage. So I need to do more research.

No pictures as data or wifi is difficult here, but we took some great pictures the last few days.

The boat is working well, we have been in some quite heavy weather and I now have a lot of confidence in our new rigging which is holding the mast up, I also know how she handles in big 30+ knot gusts with full sail up, which is surprisingly well. But I don’t want to experience that again.

Had to deal with Kathy shouting the headsail is in the water and that water is coming into the boat during the big blows, but it all worked out fine in the end. Graphic details to follow ?

Paul C