Day 102, Year 4: Contacts with Family and Friends
Date: Sunday, February 1, 2009
Weather: Still Hot and Beautiful
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island
We continue to enjoy our time working on Windbird and coming back to our studio apartment to cool off. But this morning before we headed off to the boat, we had a surprise Skype contact with my nephew Tommy, his wife Marilou, and their family in Charlotte, North Carolina. My niece Jennifer and her husband Bill were also there, so we got a double contact. This was totally unplanned but a wonderful morning surprise.
We arrived at Windbird just a little later than planned and worked on getting things removed from the deck. Since everything is securely fastened, the removal process is not easy. But we did successfully remove the mast step (major project), the wind generator, and the life raft. While Mark worked on removing these things, I worked on removing layers of 5200 (a caulk that is intended to remain forever) from around all of the dorade vent openings. All of this takes MUCH longer than it sounds, but
the work is progressing.
We took an early afternoon break to go to the local equivalent of a Super Walmart to find a gas or electric burner for cooking in our apartment. Kathy and Pete of Wave Runner went with us and rode in the back of our little truck. We all had lunch in the super cheap Asian food court on the second floor and then continued our shopping expedition downstairs. We returned to the Boat Lagoon and continued working on Windbird. We made contact with Tina and Robert on Shirena and found that they had arrived
at Boat Lagoon while we were out shopping. We had dinner with them tonight at the little Italian restaurant here and had a great time catching up on their travels since we last saw them at Railay Beach.
When we returned to our apartment tonight, we made a Skype call to Heather, Jed, and Sam. We had a great time watching Sam put on his helmet and ride on his tricycle. We saw a bit of Jed as he was trying to measure for wooden foot pedal extensions for Sam’s tricycle and we got to talk to Heather who is feeling much better than she was a week ago when she arrived back in the US.
Tomorrow is the beginning of a new week here. I think we will spend our entire week working on removing all the fittings on Windbird’s deck. Once that is done, we might have a small window when we can take a short land trip. It is really hard to predict what our next couple of months will be like. So you will really have to stay tuned.
