by Judy Handley | Jan 6, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 4, Thailand |
Day 76, Year 4: The Twelfth Day of Christmas
Date: Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Weather: Another Beautiful, Sunny Day
Location: Ao Po Grand Marina, Phuket Island, Thailand
Today is the twelfth day after Christmas and the day that I would normally take down the decorations. But that didn’t happen today. We worked all day on various boat jobs-me doing laundry, Mark sewing various boat accessories, cleaning our grill inside and out, putting up tarps for shade and rain protection, and on and on. By late afternoon, it was time for me to put another coat of varnish on the Dorade boxes. These went down to the main cabin table to dry for the night and that is when I realized
that I couldn’t take down the garland on the compression post as it was right next to the freshly varnished Dorade boxes. Little pieces of artificial garland in the varnish would not look good, so we will just leave the decorations up and let Sam help us take them down when he arrives.
Robert on Shirena called again today and said that they are headed to this marina tomorrow morning. So we are going to see our friends sooner than we thought. Evidently their dinghy motor died so they are coming in to search for a new one. They also have Tina’s daughter and Robert’s daughter onboard and both of them fly back to Australia on Thursday. So this is a good place with easy access to the airport. Robert’s son is also onboard, but he doesn’t leave until the 12th. We are looking forward
to seeing Robert and Tina again and meeting some of their family.
Windbird is almost ready for Heather, Jed, and Sam. I hesitate to say that we are ready for a two year-old, but I think we are. We have a few more jobs tomorrow and on Thursday we will do the fresh food provisioning. On Friday they will arrive and boat work will cease and the fun will begin. We love it when we have friends and family visit as that is when we get to take a vacation from our long-term vacation. World cruising is like a vacation that never ends, but there are always jobs to be
done. When friends and family visit, it is a great excuse to ignore any jobs that need to be done and just have fun. So that is what we are planning to do once Heather, Jed, and Sam arrive.
At lunch time today, we took the time to walk up to the marina office and on down the dirt road to a small open-air restaurant run by a Muslim couple from the village. It is the only option for eating out here other than the Chandara Resort and it had come highly recommended. It is just a concrete slab with a corrugated tin roof over it and a few tables and chairs plus the kitchen. Beautiful little birds in cages surround the restaurant and their songs compete with the television offering the
equivalent of Thai CNN. The food was great and the price was even better. We had lunch and both had a soft drink and the total cost was less than $4 US for both of us. Can’t beat that!
by Judy Handley | Jan 5, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 4, Thailand |
Day 75, Year 4: Another Shopping Day
Date: Monday, January 5, 2009
Weather: Beautiful, Sunny Day
Location: Ao Po Grand Marina, Phuket Island, Thailand
We are very much enjoying being here at the Ao Po Grand Marina. We are on the eastern coast of Phuket Island and can see the beautiful limestone cliffs rising straight out of the sea in the northern Phang Nga Bay. The marina is at the end of a road about 8-10 kilometers from the main road. There is one modern condominium on the road, but otherwise it is just a sleepy little Muslim village. We can see the Ao Po public pier with all of its fishing boats as we drive back from town. At low tide,
it looks like you could walk out to the pier, but today we drove in late in the afternoon. It was high tide and all of the boats made quite a beautiful picture. The disadvantage of being here is that we have to rent a car to get anywhere, but we have been connected with a young man who has a brand new Toyota Corolla that he rents out. We pay about $23 US for a partial day and will pay $40 for a full 24 hours, so it is not dirt cheap, but affordable. The young man brings the car to us at the appointed
time and then comes back to pick up his car which is a nice service. The advantage of being here is that the marina staff is extremely friendly and helpful and we love the remote location.
Today we worked on Windbird until 11 am getting the Dorade boxes ready to varnish and finished getting the life-line netting secured all around. We then headed south toward Phuket Town making a few stops along the line. Just after we enter the main road to town there is a road leading to a gibbon rehabilitation center and a place where you can ride elephants in the bush. I stopped there to check out the details of taking Sam there on his second birthday while he is here. It looks like the perfect
place as the riding trail is on flat ground and the length of the trip can be adjusted to fit Sam’s tolerance of the event. He loves elephants, however, so this should be perfect. On we went to the marina chandleries looking for a plug that would allow us to plug into shore power and to drop off our mangled length of toe rail to be “refashioned.” We then made a bee-line for the Tesco Lotus super store to buy beer before 2 o’clock. After 2:00 pm you have to wait until 5:00 pm and that is when
we were to have the car back at the marina. We made the time deadline and did a bit of food shopping while we were there. It was much less crowded today so we took the time to get well acquainted with the place. This is probably where we will reprovision for our trip across the Indian Ocean this time next year, so learning what is available is a good thing. And most everything you can imagine is available except for canned green beans, canned spinach, and canned salmon. Those items are staples
on Windbird for long passages, so we will have to continue to search for these items.
Our last stop of the day was in Phuket Town where Mark picked up his glasses that we had dropped off for repair and where we bought more time on our Thailand cell phone provider. Mark was driving and I was navigating and we got a bit lost, but eventually we got to our destination. We were driving into town from the west instead of from the north as we have previously, so this is my excuse for getting us lost.
I got the first coat of varnish on the Dorade boxes when we got back to Windbird and Mark got us connected to shore power. So things are settling in here. We are thinking of our kids as Justin and Jo are headed back to the US from England today and Heather and Jed are finishing their packing for their trip to Thailand. We will spend the next two days just hanging out here at the marina getting ready for Heather, Jed, and Sam’s arrival and talking with Justin and Jo once they are home. Then on
Thursday we will rent a car again and do the final fresh fruit and veggie run to get ready for two weeks of sailing. We are also hoping that we will get to meet our friends Robert and Tina of Shirena for lunch in Phuket Town that day. Robert called today and said that they should be returning from the west coast of mainland Thailand on Wednesday and will be in Phuket on Thursday to apply for a permit to visit the Andaman Islands. Since we will have a rental car on that day as well, it looks like
we should be able to connect. We haven’t seen them since Singapore, so it will be great fun to reconnect.
by Judy Handley | Jan 4, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 4, Thailand |
Day 74, Year 4: No More Worries
Date: Sunday, January 4, 2009
Weather: Beautiful, Sunny Day, but HOT
Location: Ao Po Grand Marina, Phuket Island, Thailand
No more worries. Kevin and Claire made it home with no problems. Claire’s email to us just never arrived, so we worried for no reason. They said they really enjoyed the day in Bangkok Claire had thought it might not be worth the effort to get into the city to see the Grand Palace and a few temples, but she said loud and clear last night that we must find our way to Bangkok. We’ll probably do that when we fly back to the states.
The sunny days here are beautiful but they are hot. The bright sunshine today made for a perfect day for drying the last coat of varnish on the cockpit coaming but it was not so perfect for Mark who needed to be outside all day getting the lifeline netting installed. It actually has taken longer than he expected, but with just a little more work tomorrow morning Windbird’s decks will be child-proofed. After my early morning varnishing, I spent most of the rest of my day inside cleaning and rearranging
things so Sam will have a permanent bunk while he is here. That accomplished, I headed outside to scrub a white suncover for the back deck. It had gotten stored in an outside locker and was covered with mildew, but it is now once again bright white. We have a small kiddie pool that we bought to put on the back deck under the suncover so Sam can have a place to cool off during the hot days. I think we might all join him!
While we’re getting ready for Heather, Jed, and Sam’s arrival, I’m sure they are back home rushing to pack and probably wondering whose bright idea it was to travel halfway around the world with an active two-year old. I think it was our idea and we just hope it is worth all the effort we know they are having to make to get here. They arrive at 1 am on Friday morning, so Friday will be a quiet day here at the marina. If they are recovered by Saturday, we will start our sailing adventure. We can’t
wait.
by Judy Handley | Jan 3, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 4, Thailand |
Day 73, Year 4: Me Worry
Date: Saturday, January 3, 2009
Weather: Windy, Overcast, but No Rain
Location: Ao Po Grand Marina, Phuket Island, Thailand
Okay. We are STILL here at the marina and have now decided that we will stay here until Heather, Jed, and Sam arrive early in the morning (1:00 am) on Friday. Of course, that could change, but leaving today was just too difficult. We have no dodger or bimini as we removed them for varnishing, so leaving in windy conditions with slightly rough seas could have led to a wet ride. And the weather was good for varnishing this morning, so we took advantage of that instead of heading out. So Windbird
is still tied to land for now.
I spent my morning sanding and varnishing while Mark installed a new bilge pump, took out the old sound insulation in the engine room which was starting to fall apart, re-tightened the bolts on the coupling that connects the transmission to the prop shaft, topped off the water in the starting battery, and started putting up the lifeline netting that we are installing to keep our grandson Sam onboard and not falling overboard. Windbird is being transformed into a kid boat. We have watched other
cruisers with wee ones with admiration and now we will be the ones with a wee one. The kid sailors out here all seem to do fine, so hopefully Sam will do the same. We are just so excited about Heather, Jed, and Sam’s visit. It is now a six day countdown. We also visited our friends Judy and Howard on Laelia today. They are one of the few cruisers here at Ao Po and it was good to reconnect with them. They are getting ready to head across the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea, so we hope they have
uneventful trip.
Foremost in our thoughts tonight are Kevin and Claire. This is why “me worry.” Where are they? They promised to email as soon as they returned home, but we have heard nothing. When we email them, we get the “out of office” response. We will wait until a little later tonight and then try to call their home phone. That will be early morning in Virgina. They live in a house with other people, so hopefully someone will answer our call and have more information than we do. In the meantime, Kevin
and Claire, we hope you are home safe and sound. And not having too hard a time adjusting.
by Judy Handley | Jan 2, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 4, Thailand |
Day 72, Year 4: Exploring Phuket
Date: Friday, January 2, 2009
Weather: Rain Over Night; Overcast with Sprinkles All Day
Location: Ao Po Grand Marina, Phuket Island, Thailand
I know we are not supposed to still be here in the marina, but our chores in town today took much longer than we had planned. So we will be leaving in the morning. It rained off and on all night last night. This was not a good thing for the varnish job on the cockpit coaming. Nor did it help the last of the laundry to dry. So the laundry has been brought inside to dry and it looks like the varnish job is salvageable if this weather ever clears up. In the meantime, we have no dodger or bimini
covering the cockpit, so we have to close up tight to keep the rain out of the boat. Since the weather wasn’t cooperating with our plans, we rented a car went to do some of our chores in town. We expected to be gone four hours, but that turned into eight. We had hoped to leave our piece of toe rail at Precision Shipwright to use as a guide in making a new piece, but they, as well as most of Phuket, were closed today. Most businesses will not open until Monday, but there were still enough open
to get quite a few things done. We stopped at two chandleries and bought black cord to put up the life-line netting to keep our grandson from going overboard once he arrives. We also bought a new bilge pump to replace one of the faulty ones.
We then went to downtown Phuket to the Tourist Information Center to gather a little more information, left Mark’s glasses in a shop to be repaired (the frames broke shortly after Kevin and Claire arrived), were successful in getting money out of the ATM as long as each transaction was less than $65 US, had lunch, and then started our “tour” of the major supermarkets. There are three and they are huge. And not only are they huge, they are unbelievably crowded. The hordes of people were overwhelming,
but worse than that was that they really didn’t have most things I was looking for. All three stores are like a Super Walmart. They have more clothing and plastic trinkets than they do food. I was most struck by the rows and rows of snacks and junk food. No pretzels (Mark is out and this is his favorite.), but rows and rows of different kinds of chips, cookies, and candies. And there was every kind of sugar and rice you can imagine–red rice, blue rice, green rice. But there was not much else.
The only canned vegetables are corn and mushrooms and most of the crackers are sweet. It was easier to shop in Langkawi but that is because we had a guide put together by cruisers telling us where to go. We have a lot more to learn about Phuket. I know this is where many cruisers provision for the long haul across the Indian Ocean, so there must be food out there somewhere. And you can only buy beer from 11 am to 2 pm and then again from 5 pm to midnight. Of course, we were shopping between
3:00 and 4:00 pm, so we had to skip that.
Instead of going straight back to the marina, we decided to take a little trip north, across the bridge, to mainland Thailand. We had hoped to find the Phang Nga Bay National Marine Park, but that alluded us. We did see the countryside which we always enjoy. We returned to the marina by 6 pm to find it VERY windy. There is a high stalled over the upper Thailand and the South China Sea according to the Thai weather site online and it is causing this rainy, windy weather. It should get better
over the next couple of days, and then come back again. I guess when Kevin and Claire left the good weather went with them, but I’m sure Heather, Jed, and Sam will bring a return of sunny skies. By the way, we haven’t heard from Kevin and Claire even though I feel sure they should be home by now. I hope I’ll have a confirmation of their safe arrival by tomorrow night’s log.
by Judy Handley | Jan 1, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 4, Thailand |
Day 71, Year 4: Happy New Year!
Date: Thursday, January 1, 2009
Weather: Mix of Sun and Clouds with Afternoon Rain
Location: Ao Po Grand Marina, Phuket Island, Thailand
We had a quiet New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. In fact, I don’t think either of us left the boat after we returned from taking Kevin and Claire to the airport. We have been working feverishly to get things done that can only be done in a marina. Our plan is to leave here tomorrow after a quick shopping trip and go hang out at nearby islands until next Wednesday or Thursday. We will then return here and get ready for the arrival of Heather, Jed, and Sam. I have been doing mega laundry since
we are at a dock with water and Mark has been doing a lot of work on the internet as well as other boat maintenance. The internet connection here is good and has allowed us to talk with our bank back in the US. We have not been able to get money out of an ATM using our bank card in Thailand. We think we have things straightened out but will really only find out tomorrow when we go into town to try the ATM once again. Evidently Thailand will only allow an ATM withdrawal of $65 US at one time.
We have never heard of this restriction before, so it will be interesting to see if that has really been the problem. We have also both continued to make Skype calls. I did talk to my sister and Mark talked to his brother last night, and tonight Mark talked to his sister and we talked to Justin and Jo. They are still in Europe and actually celebrated the New Year in Amsterdam. They head back to England tomorrow and return home to Santa Fe on Monday. Jo looks great and is feeling good and that
little bump is getting a wee bit bigger. The bummer of the day was that I attempted to get the cockpit coaming sanded and varnished, which I did, but as soon as I finished the job, we got rain. So that will have to be resanded and varnished in 24 hours.
The one thing I did not get to do was catch up on correspondence to friends and family. I know that won’t happen tomorrow, but maybe on Saturday. I’m determined to do a better job of keeping in touch in 2009, so I guess that is my New Year’s resolution. I’m getting a slow start, but hopefully I’ll get there. So if you haven’t heard from me for a while, just know that I am thinking of you and will be in touch soon!
