Day 66, Year 5: Once in a Blue Moon
Date: Thursday, December 31, 2009
Weather: Most Sunny; NE Winds 10-15
Latitude: N 07 degrees 53.446 minutes
Longitude: E 098 degrees 17.025 minutes
Location: Patong Beach, Phuket Island, Thailand

This New Year’s Eve is a special one as it hosts the second full moon in month of December. The first was on December 2. The second full moon in a month has become known as a blue moon after a writer for Sky & Telescope magazine in 1946 misinterpreted the Maine Farmer’s Almanac and labeled a blue moon as the second full moon in a month. They only happen on New Year’s Eve every 19 years. The last time was in 1990; the next one won’t come again until 2028. So enjoy this one and know that it is even more special in that it is a blue moon ending a decade and there will be a lunar eclipse. Unfortunately, we all need to be in India to see the full effect, but I will enjoy whatever we get to see.

So it is about 9 pm on New Year’s Eve here in Thailand. We watched the almost full moon rise as the sun set (full moon for us is sometime tomorrow morning) and then the beautiful parade of lanterns started sailing across the sky, first above the moon and now sailing under the moon. These Thai lanterns are just spectacular as they float through the sky looking like stars, but they are just a forerunner of the fireworks to come. Some small displays have already started and as we understand it, the show continues until 2 in the morning. Not sure will be up for that but we’ll enjoy what we see in the meantime.
We motor sailed the ten miles from Nai Harn to here this morning with about fifteen other boats. The anchorage here is huge, so there is no problem accommodating the many boats here. But Patong Beach is a little like a small glitzy Miami Beach with a little sleeze from the worst of Bourbon Street in New Orleans thrown in. It is fun, but it is not relaxing. We went into town when we first arrived and walked to the huge, modern mall that is here. That mall includes a Carrefour super market which was super crowded today. Carrefour is French and the last one we shopped in was in Papeete in Tahiti. We found some of the nicest meat we have seen in a long time with the array of French Thai beef and pork. We had the pork loin chops tonight and they were wonderful. So we might be going back to purchase more. But we won’t stay here for long. The anchorage is full of crazy tourists speeding through on their ski doos which causes a constant rock and roll. There is a wonderful floating jetty, however, that makes it easy to get supplies on to the dinghy and that has its draw.

But with all the lanterns and fireworks, the brightest spot in our evening was a video Skype call with Justin, Jo, and Ziggy. It was early afternoon there and Ziggy was finally awake. He amazed us he fingered the travel guitar sitting in front of him. I thought he was playing a keyboard until Justin pointed out that it was a guitar. He has obviously watched his mom and dad and now has developed his own techniques. And he is also starting to walk and climb. What a little character he is.

The lights of the lanterns floating serenely above us and the display of fireworks is increasing. And now the music has started in earnest. So I’d better send this log and enjoy the show. Our friends from Shirena, Scot Free II, and Rendezvous Cay went to the see the Simon Show tonight (the lady boy show) that we saw on my birthday last March. They should be returning in a while and will hopefully stop by for a New Year’s champagne toast. Robert and Tina leave on Saturday for their journey to the Red Sea, so we want to send them off in style.

Day 65, Year 5: Still in Nai Harn Bay
Date: Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Weather: Most Sunny; NE Winds 10-15
Location: Nai Harn Bay, Phuket Island, Thailand

We are still sitting here in Nai Harn Bay. Before Christmas there were almost a hundred boats here, but the number has diminished somewhat. Lots of boats have left, but today many came in. Neil and Ley on Crystal Blues made it in today and Barbara and Cory on Increscent Moon (a Tayana sister ship) came in last night. We delayed leaving today as Mark is really not feeling great and we wanted to connect with Barbara and Cory. They are going to leave with us in the morning and sail to Patong Beach for the big New Year’s Eve celebration there. After that we really aren’t sure what we will do. We know we just have to choose an anchorage that has good beach access so we can do our last bit of provisioning. That might mean returning to Ao Po Marina where we spent time last year if Patong doesn’t work out as a good provisioning anchorage. The anchorage we are in is lovely, but there are times when the rollers are heading into the beach which makes getting your dinghy off quite interesting. And we learned from Cory and Barbara that the dinghy dock at Ao Chalong, poor as it was, was removed yesterday. That makes the only access there by climbing a ladder and that just doesn’t work for provisioning.

Mark spent the morning removing the backup alternator and installing the big one which was just repaired. It is rated at 200 Amps and will make our charging time shorter.

I had a wonderful, long telephone call with our daughter Heather today. And we are hoping that we are finally going to get to connect with Justin, Jo, and Ziggy tonight. We will be making as many contacts as possible in the next week, as we could be leaving any time after that when the weather is right. The trip to Cochin, India, will be the second longest passage we have ever had. The longest was from the Galapagos to the Marqueses at 3,000 miles. The passage to Cochin is just a little more than half of that but the winds could be either non-existent or more gusty than one would like. I’m truly hoping for something in the middle. Maybe we will be lucky.

Day 64, Year 5: Cold, but not the Temperature
Date: Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Weather: Most Sunny; NE Winds 10
Location: Nai Harn Bay, Phuket Island, Thailand

Mark woke up this morning with a killer cold. He was coughing in the rental car yesterday, but we had hoped it was the air conditioning. But not so. So we had to slow down a bit today and hopefully he will get to sleep early tonight and will wake up tomorrow feeling much better. That’s optimistic, but one can always hope.

Our little power struggles are continuing, but we did get our alternator back this afternoon and if Mark feels up to it, he will install it in the morning. His contribution to the power issue today was to remove all of the leads from the shunt, clean the connections, and then reattach the leads. The shunt is basically a metal device that is wired to the batteries and allows us to read the amperage that the batteries are consuming or putting out at any one time. We had no further wild readings on our battery monitor for the remainder of the day, but we will have to see what tomorrow morning brings. We just have to keep checking on this issue one little step at a time.

I borrowed Scot Free II’s canner once again and this time I actually got the spaghetti sauce made and am waiting for the canning process to be done as I write this log. If the whole process works, it will be great to have the canned spaghetti sauce with ground beef when we are doing passages. This helps reduce the amount of meat I need to keep in the freezer and the canned sauce is like an instant meal. I can heat it up in the microwave if things are really rough, so I’m so glad I’m finally getting this done.

We had Ed and Lynne of Constance over this evening for Happy Hour. They arrived here yesterday, but we got home so late last night that we didn’t get to connect. They are the only couple we know of at this point headed our way this year but we know there will be others. But until we meet those people, Constance and Windbird have a lot in common and it is great fun to get together and discuss our plans. They are staying here for New Year’s Eve and we might decide to stay here as well, especially if Mark is not feeling better. We will just have to see what tomorrow morning brings.

Day 63, Year 5: On the Third Day of Christmas . . .
Date: Monday, December 28, 2009
Weather: Most Sunny; NE Winds 10
Location: Nai Harn Bay, Phuket Island, Thailand

. . . our children sent to us a Oi! Special Holiday Issue with scurrilous gossip about our grandkids! This was supposed to arrive before Christmas, but when we last checked at the Boat Lagoon, the ‘package’ wasn’t there. We only knew something was coming in a flat envelope, but we didn’t know what it was. Well, today when we went to the Boat Lagoon, the Special Edition was there. It is like a big card with photos of us and the grandchildren on the front. The headlines are things like, “Grandparents missed by babies worldwide.” And “Miracle Recovery from Big Bonk” featuring a photo of Sam with the bandage on his forehead after his big fall in December that resulted in seven stitches. “Cranberry sauce ravaged by wild and noisy Ziggy” with a photo of Ziggy making the biggest mess you can imagine with mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce on his high chair tray at Thanksgiving. And then there is this great photo of Jonah in a basket of laundry labeled, “Big Launderer.” We were so happy to get the magazine card and to be able to share it with some of our good friends over lunch at the Boat Lagoon. It is always a special time when you get to show off photos of your grandkids. We had lunch with Tim and Rose of Rendezvous Cay, Judy and Dave of Freebird, Larry and Peg of Blue Star, and Gerry and Donna of Scot Free II. We hope to see Rendezvous Cay and Freebird in Cochin, India, but they are headed to the Red Sea and we are not. So it is possible that our timing will be off and we might not see them again until we are all back in the US. When we leave here, we leave Blue Star and Scot Free behind, so it was really nice to take a break in the middle of a very busy day of shopping to share time with good friends.

We left Windbird at 8:30 am and returned at 8:30 pm. Except for the lunch break, those hours were all spent shopping. We first stopped to check on our alternator-may be ready tomorrow. Then we went to Ao Chalong to check a chandlery there for a Raritan toilet pump and a VHF antenna for Scot Free. We no longer have a spare toilet pump, but we have looked high and low and there just doesn’t seem to be one here. The same is true of VHF antennas. So on we went. Our next stop was downtown Phuket where Donna and Gerry applied for Indian visas so they can visit the Andaman’s and we picked up our passports with our six-month multiple entry visas for India. We then headed to a bank with the passports to get a money transfer to the BIOT folks for our Chagos mooring permit. In the time we did that, Gerry was fitted for new reading glasses and was wearing them by the time we got out of the bank. Some things are incredibly fast here. We stopped at one more chandlery downtown to look for the toilet pump and the VHF antenna, but again, nothing. We were incredibly lucky and found what appears to be the one and only VHF antenna on this island at the Boat Lagoon later in the afternoon, so Donna and Gerry were elated. But still no luck in finding the toilet pump.

We took Donna and Gerry to Super Cheap. Everyone must experience this at least one time. The place is absolutely huge and has everything from live fish in a tank, fresh fruits and vegetables, packaged foods of all sorts, drinks of all kinds by the case, hardware, clothing, flowers, you name it. But it is a dump of a place that is not air conditioned, and it is just overwhelming. But we knew what we were looking for and grabbed those items and got out as fast as we could. You save a fair bit of money by buying there, but you do have to put up with the hassles. Then we went to Farang Foods which is a distributor to restaurants and is on the total other end of the food spectrum. This place specializes in fancy foods and the prices aren’t cheap. But on items like flaked almonds and rolled oats for our granola, it is definitely the place to shop. The last stop was Tesco Lotus, a huge supermarket that is like a Super Walmart. By the time we finished shopping there, we were all exhausted. Gerry bought some prepared sushi at Tesco and we took it to Dunkin’ Donuts where we sat and had Iced Americano coffees with our little sushi trays. By the time we got back to Nai Harn, it was well after dark and we had to do a couple of shuttles to and from the beach to get all of our things. Gerry brought me and all of our bags to Windbird first, and then went back to get Mark and Donna and all of Scot Free’s bags. They had picked us up this morning, so we had no dinghy on shore.

We were going to move to Patong Beach tomorrow, but we have decided to stay here one more day. Our friends Ed and Lynne of Constance arrived here today and we are anxious to catch up with them and see what their plans are for leaving for Cochin. The time is drawing near. I’ll need to do one more supermarket run and then one huge fresh fruit and veg run before leaving. We’ll also need to fill up with diesel, so we need to make plans for that. We’re hoping to leave around the same time as Constance, so we are looking forward to talking with them tomorrow.

Day 62, Year 5: Continuing Electrical Woes
Date: Sunday, December 27, 2009
Weather: Most Sunny; NE Winds 10-15
Location: Nai Harn Bay, Phuket Island, Thailand

A wind generator that is not working quite right, strange readings on our battery monitor, almost new batteries that lose their charge much too quickly, and an alternator that is still not rebuilt . . . those are the electrical woes we are experiencing and they all seem to hit at once today. So our entire day was spent trouble shooting the various problems that just can no longer be ignored. First we wrote to Southwest Wind Power about our new Air Breeze that brakes itself every few minutes. Then Mark spent some time checking the connections and rewiring and for the rest of the day, the Air Breeze has been working beautifully. So MAYBE we have that problem solved. Then we started looking at what could be discharging our batteries so quickly. We turned everything off except the Master Battery Switch, and we were still showing a discharge of 10 amps. When we turned off the Master Battery Switch and then turned it back on, the discharge of 10 amps disappeared and it has stayed that way the rest of the day. So Mark took the battery switch apart and cleaned the connections. We are recording the readings on the battery monitor every half hour or so, and all of a sudden everything seems normal. So we really don’t know what has been going on, but as of right now, it all appears to be fine. That must be a mirage, so we’ll keep close watch over the next few days to see what happens. We are hoping to get our alternator back tomorrow and if that happens then we can really test our capacity as it is normally. Wish us luck. We think electrical issues are the trickiest to deal with as a cruiser. We rely on Nigel Calder’s Boatowner’s Mechanical and Electrical Manuel as our bible, so hopefully that will help us make it through this issue.

Needless to say, all fun activities were called off for today. We did take a dip in the water around the boat and had salt water baths rinsing off with our Sun Shower at the end of the day. The water temperature here is perfect. This anchorage has clear water with lots of little fish even right here at the boat. There appear to be more jellyfish out there than we remember last year, so one of us does jellyfish watch while the other is in the water bathing and when we snorkel, we wear our bodysuits even though the water is warm.

We have successfully rented a car for tomorrow, and Donna and Gerry of Scot Free II will be going with us. The list is a mile long, so we know we will only accomplish half of what is on it, but it is nice to know what we need to do even if it doesn’t all get done. On Tuesday morning we will move north to the next beach, Kata, and then on Wednesday or Thursday, we will move to Patong Beach for the New Year’s Eve celebration there. Along with our other electrical woes today, we couldn’t even get on the internet. I wanted to talk to my family who was gathered at my nephew Rex’s home in West Virginia for a day after Christmas party. I could only connect by phone. We are still hoping to connect with Justin, Jo, and Ziggy later tonight, but not sure it will happen due to the internet issues here. In the bays to the north there will be internet cafes and we might have to do that if the wireless situation doesn’t improve. It was so great on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day-just not sure what has happened.

Day 61, Year 5: The Day After Christmas
Date: Saturday, December 26, 2009
Weather: Most Sunny; E Winds 10-15
Location: Nai Harn Bay, Phuket Island, Thailand

We started our day by having a wonderful brunch on Scot Free II. That led to some boat talk and to some boat problem solving on Scot Free’s VHF radio. They have been able to receive but not to transmit, and that usually indicates an antenna problem. We tried a different antenna that had been offered on the morning net, but that didn’t work. So we came back to Windbird where Mark climbed the mast to remove our antenna, and then take it to Scot Free II where Gerry went up the mast with it. This did it. We now knew that Scot Free needs a new antenna as their radio worked perfectly with our antenna. But antennas are hard to find here. So that search will continue on Monday.

Mark and Gerry went to shore to try and find a rental car for Monday, but they found nothing. It is such a small beach that we were sure someone on shore would have been able to point them in the right direction. But not so. When they returned I called Shirena and got the phone number for the rental agency. Sure wish we had done that before going to shore, but now we have made a connection on the phone and will go in tomorrow morning to sign the agreement. But not toooo early.

We are hoping that we can stay on the boat most of tomorrow and just catch up on life. We tried to connect with Justin, Jo, and Ziggy today, but that didn’t happen. Maybe that will happen tomorrow as well. We sure hope so as we are overdue on our Ziggy time.

Day 60, Year 5: Christmas Fun
Date: Friday, December 25, 2009
Weather: Partly Sunny,Variable Winds
Location: Nai Harn Bay, Phuket Island, Thailand

What a fun Christmas we have had. Starting last night with the buffet on Jungle Beach, continuing with a late morning gathering on Truest Passion, snorkeling in the afternoon, a late afternoon salad course on Shirena and followed by a traditional Christmas dinner on Windbird. In between all of this, we had some great Skype call connections with our kids. We saw Sam and Jonah on Christmas Eve (our Christmas morning) and then again we watched them opening their stocking gifts on Christmas morning (our Christmas evening). At the very end of our day we got to see Justin, Jo, and Ziggy and all of Jo’s family in England. We are so thankful that we had good Skype connections. That was the best Christmas present ever.

The party last night was so much fun. We sat at a table with Robert and Tina of Shirena (Australia, Robert by way of Poland), Donna and Gerry of Scot Free II (Canada), Richard and Susan of Sea Bunny (England), Nannette and Stuart of Truest Passion (Australia, Stuart by way of Scotland), and Guy and Annika of Street Legal (England and Sweden respectively). The little restaurant hosting the party is often referred to as Jungle Beach. The food was good, the band was great, and the people selling touristy things made the evening become even more lively. Gerry decided that he had to buy sunglasses for all of us that have little lights all around the rim that can be turned on to blink. So we became the brightest table at the party. Then either Donna or Tina bought us all Santa hats with blinking lights around the white band. We were looking good. And then a young woman came by with traditional hill country hats. You just have to see these to understand, but I had to have one and will wear it every Christmas Eve for the rest of my life. The whole evening was just great fun.

Truest Passion had us over for a late morning social today. Richard and Susan of Sea Bunny dug out a bottle of Pimm’s No.1 that has been in their bilge for a few years. This is a gin-based alcohol and mixed with lemonade it was a perfect warm Christmas morning drink (a traditional English summer drink). Then we went snorkeling before heading back to Windbird to cook the turkey breast and make the mashed potatoes and gravy. At 4 pm we went to Shirena for a champagne toast and salads. Tina made a wonderful beef tenderloin Thai salad and Donna added a Greek salad. Both were absolutely delicious. On Windbird we had Butterball turkey breast, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, asparagus, and finished off with pecan and pumpkin pie with whipped cream. We are stuffed!

Then came the highlight of the day. We had an absolutely fabulous Skype connection with video and got to watch as Sam and Jonah dug into their Christmas stockings. We almost felt like we were there. We talked to Mark’s sister and to my sister, and ended our Christmas day with a Skype video call with Justin and Jo. Unfortunately, Ziggy was sleeping and hasn’t been awake much since arriving in England late yesterday. But we got to see him sleeping and we did get to see everyone else. We will try another call tomorrow and hope that Ziggy has recovered from the flight. Now it’s time to get ready for Boxing Day.

091224 Thailand–Skype Photos of Sam and Jonah in Maine

091225 Thailand–Christmas Day in Nai Harn

091225 Thailand–Skype Photos of Grandkids

Day 59, Year 5: Warmest Holiday Wishes from Windbird
Date: Thursday, December 24, 2009
Weather: Partly Sunny, Becoming Overcase; SW Winds 10
Location: Nai Harn Bay, Phuket Island, Thailand

It might not be warm where you are, but we can honestly send you the warmest of wishes at this glorious time of year. It is always in the 80′s here in southern Thailand at this time of year and this afternoon, I have been baking stuffing, a pecan pie, and a pumpkin pie for Christmas Day. The oven is tiny, so each thing had to be baked one at a time. That has raised the inside temperature to almost 95 degrees F. So truly, warmest wishes from Windbird.

Whether you are family, land-based friend, or fellow cruiser, we will be thinking of all of you during the holidays. Every year of our voyage, my hope for the new year is that I will have more time to communicate with each of you more often. I’m really hoping to send out monthly letters from Windbird and the next one will be due on New Year’s Day. So until then, enjoy where ever you are and whomever you are with. We are missing family terribly right now. It is a hard time of year to be so far away. But we have done everything we can to be able to connect with them via Skype with video on Christmas Day. The only thing that could alter our great plan is the fact that almost everyone else in the world will be trying to do the same time, and we might not get through. If that happens, we’ll just have to be satisfied with the day after Christmas.

We are celebrating Christmas Eve with cruisers from around the world. We will meet on shore and be treated to be scrumptious buffet at a little resort that welcomes cruisers this way every year. But it is not really the food that we are seeking, it is the camaraderie of fellow sailors, all far away from home. Tomorrow we will have dinner with our closest friends from the past year of sailing, Tina and Robert of Shirena and Donna and Gerry of Scot Free II. Scot Free just arrived and they are going to shore to the buffet with us.

We had two great Skype calls today, one with our friends Alan and Helaine in Concord, NH, and another with Jean and Ken of Renaissance 2000 in Richards Bay. It was so great to talk to them. Our son Justin, Jo, and Ziggy should have arrived in England today and our daughter Heather, Jed, Sam, and Jonah are at the farm in Maine. We have family in North Carolina, Ohio, Georgia, West Virginia, and Florida. We have good friends in Australia, in Vanuatu, in Fiji, in Malaysia, here in Thailand and all over the US. We are all spread out all over the world. So joy to the world!

091224 Thailand–Christmas Eve on Jungle Beach

Day 58, Year 5: Quiet Day in Nai Harn
Date: Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Weather: Most Sunny; E Winds 10-15
Location: Nai Harn Bay, Phuket Island, Thailand

Compared to most, this was a very quiet day. I did laundry, Mark moved the location of our VHF radio placing it inside the boat at the Nav Station and installed a new remote mike in the cockpit, and we took the dinghy to shore to explore internet café possibilities. This beach is one of the less frenzied ones in southern Thailand. Most of the beachfront property is owned by a Buddhist monastery and as far as we can tell there are only two major hotels in the Bay, a Meridian and something called All Seasons. That was not of much interest to us until we returned from our two mile walk that did not produce an internet café. We can call our kids from the boat, but we wanted good internet to make video Skype calls on Christmas. It doesn’t seem to be here, so in the morning we will go to the fancy Meridian Hotel called the Royal Phuket Yacht Club (not a yacht club in any way, shape, or form) and see if they will sell us wireless internet time. We will then have to test it to see if it will handle video, and if not, we might need to take a taxi ride on Christmas evening so we can see our kids on Christmas morning in Maine and Christmas afternoon in England.

Landing a dinghy on the main beach here is interesting in that there is a slight swell pushing you up on the beach even though the wind is blowing the opposite direction. We landed the dinghy with no problem, but the next swell sent Mark flying into the water and the sand was so soft that we had a real challenge pulling the dinghy up out of the water. And the landing at the little resort where we will have Christmas Eve dinner tomorrow night is a rock strewn obstacle course. So it’s much easier to just sit here on the boat than to go ashore, but we will just have to get a little braver.

Last night we had three wonderful telephone calls to the US. I talked to my sister-in-law Conda and brother Dickie, Mark talked to Heather to see if the colds the boys have were any better (Sam is better; Jonah was not.), and I talked to my friend Linda Stuart in Concord, NH. This calling card that allows hour long phone calls with almost no cost is wonderful. We do that with Skype on the computer, but being able to make a phone call on a cell phone that is crystal clear from anywhere that has a cell signal to anywhere else in the world is really unbelievable. We’ll make more calls over the next couple of days and connect with family and friends back home.

Tomorrow will be a cooking day for me. I plan to bake a pumpkin pie, a pecan pie (Mark’s favorite), and get the onions and celery cut for the stuffing for Christmas Day. I also have to bake banana bread as the bananas we bought in Ao Chalong were starting to draw fruit flies. I hate those little things. So Christmas Eve day for us will be a busy one and then we will go ashore for the big dinner tomorrow night. So the hurry, scurry of the holidays is here.

Day 57, Year 5: Check It Out!
Date: Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Weather: Most Sunny; E Winds 10-15
Latitude: N 07 degrees 46.473 minutes
Longitude: E 098 degrees 18.031 minutes
Location: Nai Harn Bay, Phuket Island, Thailand

Check out the updated website. Our son Justin gave us an early Christmas present and got the new information on the site for us. We were so excited. We find it hard to believe that we didn’t have time in more than two and half years to at least update once a year, but I guess we have been that busy. We still have to update the map of Where We Are Now and add back the sailing itineraries from the first two years that somehow got lost in the transfer. But we are up-to-date and that feels wonderful. Thank you, Justin and Jo, for taking time in this very busy season to get this done for us.

And another thing we absolutely love is this 3G modem that allows us to have internet access anywhere that we have phone service. In Thailand that is almost everywhere. And we should definitely have cell service in Cochin, India. We know there is 3G service in the southern Maldives, but it all stops when we reach the Chagos. But once again when we are in Rodrigues, Mauritius, and Reunion, maaaaaybeee in Madagascar, and definitely in South Africa, we should have cell service, and therefore, internet. I think Windbird has just come into the 21st century.

We waited until the tide was rising to move from Ao Chalong to Nai Harn Bay. It is only about ten miles, but it is a shallow ten miles and we thought it best to do it on the rising tide. Nai Harn is the southern most bay on Phuket Island and it is lovely. It is beautiful in the way that anchorages in Maine are with rocks all along the shore and deciduous trees covering the hills. There are no palm trees here and no dramatic limestone karsts, but the white sand beach is lovely, albeit covered with tourists. We are pretending that the white sand is snow. And speaking of snow, we talked to our daughter Heather last night after we sent the log and found out that New England and much of the northern east coast of the US has been blanketed by snow. What a nice early Christmas present for folks in the northeastern part of the US.

Robert and Tina on Shirena have been in this bay for three days now and Robert came over soon after we arrived to invite us over for Happy Hour. They are planning on leaving Thailand just after the New Year for the northern Maldives and then northwest to Salala, Oman. There has been some recent pirate activity on the route from the Maldives to Salala, so they are going to head almost due north from the Maldives before heading west to Salala. Others are going straight to Cochin, India, and then north to Mumbai (Bombay in times past) and then west to Salala. These Somali pirates are making life most interesting for many people.

Tonight here is early morning in the US and we are planning on making a few phone calls. The CAT international card we bought is unbelievable. It costs less than a 1/3 of a penny per minute to talk to anyone anywhere in the world and our cell is not charged as we dial into an 800 number. We are not sure if we can make Skype calls using the internet on the boat as Thailand is still 2G not 3G. But we are going to try that tonight as well. So we’ll report on that tomorrow night.