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.
