A more leisurely week.

Kathy thought I should post something to let you all now everything is going ok. Firstly thanks to those who have sent their good wishes to me, I am making an effort to be more careful, but my Ego is already kicking in and it’s becoming obvious that the pontoon was the one at fault 😉

Actually, having gone over the incident a lot, it’s clear to me, that all that happened was I was walking backwards pulling the trolley, when the pontoon got narrower, I was at the edge and so fell in, I couldn’t see that far behind me, and didn’t expect the pontoon to narrow, in fact it’s the only bit of pontoon, in the many hundreds of yards of pontoon here, where there is a narrowing. Regardless I think I have learnt that making assumptions like that are ill advised, especially when walking backwards pulling a trolley.

Yesterday was relaxing, although a few bruises started to surface, however today I’m back to normal, assuming I don’t knock the top of my head, I had an unpleasant encounter with a sweet potato earlier that was protruding from the hanging basket of veg in the cabin.

Today we hired a car as I needed to get my blood pressure checked, it’s back to normal now. I found out that you can go into most chemists and they do it for free. We are going to buy one of the basic electronic testers for the boat, they are only £20 and could be useful when trying to get medical help over the SSB (long range radio), I also bought a load of bandages and bits and bobs, so all in all we are better prepared for any future trolley attacks or pontoon uprisings.

I had two great battery backup devices for the iThings, sadly they are toast now, Sorry Tim and Isaac. Note to self, “there’s really no need to take both out on a shopping trip”.

After the shopping we took a drive down to the coast at Ao Po and saw zillions of tourists disembarking the various day trip boats that had taken them to the islands, on the way there I saw this monkey crossing the road, He didn’t like me stopping at all and stared me out the whole time I was there. This was the first monkey we had seen here, but I gather there are a few around the island.

Just thought I would add this picture of some long-tail boats we saw today, the engine is quite big, probably the same size of most family car engines, and is counter-balanced by the prop and prop shaft and pivots somehow on the block you can see.  I think they must have evolved as a cheap way to add an engine to wooden sail/row boats, plus it has the advantage of being easy to manage in shallow waters, which abound round here.

Apologies for the pasty pictures, I have had to fall back to my iPhone 5s, which has a camera problem, I think I replaced it myself a few years back, and the quality of the replacement is rubbish. So much for ‘Genuine Apple Part’.

Heading back to the marina we stopped off at a local market setup in a roadside field, Kathy has a new book of Thai vegetarian recipes which needed some unknown ingredients. e.g. Galangal, which looks like ginger, but has enough of a difference to require us to seek it out. We did well, and now have a stack of unusual veg ready for the pot. I’m  looking forward to trying these out.

Tomorrow (Friday) I’m going to fit the new mainsail and make sure the battens fit and it goes up ok. will also start to get the boat tidied up, ready for our slightly delayed ‘off’ on Tuesday.

Paul Collister