by Judy Handley | Jan 10, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 4, Thailand |
Day 80, Year 4: How Wonderful . . . Life Aboard with a Two Year-Old
Date: Saturday, January 10, 2009
Weather: Sunny and VERY Windy
Location: Ao Po Grand Marina, Phuket Island, Thailand
We went to the airport at midnight last night to wait for the 1 am arrival of Heather, Jed, and Sam. The plane landed a bit late and by 1:30 there were no more passengers coming out of the International Arrival area. There had been so many tour operators awaiting the arrival of clients, but by 1:30 everyone was gone. We were worried. Where could H, J, and S be? We could look through the glass doors to the arrival area and no one was there. About the time I started to really panic, we saw a little blonde two-year old bopping about in the area. It was our Sam dancing to his own tune and not looking the least bit sleepy. We then saw Heather and Jed, and as they approached the glass doors separating us from the arrival area, Sam saw us and that beautiful face lit up in a complete grin as he ran toward us. It was certainly a look of recognition and that made me a very happy grandma. By the time we got back to the boat and went to bed it was almost 3 am and Sam slept fitfully with crying spells until about 6 am. At that point, he fell fast asleep and we all slept until almost 8 am. Sam had a few tenuous moments this morning getting used to the idea that there is no land around our house. But by day’s end, he seems much more comfortable with the fact that Oma and Granddad’s home is a boat floating on the water. We took a morning walk up to the marina and on to the Chandara Resort to show Sam the pool and the beautiful views. He amazes us with his “Wow” and “Whoa” statements when he sees beautiful views. We returned to the boat for lunch and naps (all of us) and then went back to the resort for a late afternoon swim and appetizers before dinner. We returned to Windbird for a grilled chicken, corn-on-the-cob, and salad dinner, and by 9 pm Sam was fast asleep and tucked into his little bunk in the main cabin. As parents and grandparents, it has been an absolutely amazing day. It is just so special to have our children join us and experience a little of our amazing adventure, and even more incredible to have a grandchild and grandchild-to-be with us. Yes, our daughter Heather is pregnant and due in mid- to late-June. So we will be returning home for the birth of two grandchildren this year. Life just gets better and better.
We will probably spend one more day here at the marina. That extreme high coming down from China has caused a very, very windy situation here in the Phang Nga Bay, Things are supposed to calm down considerably by Monday mid-day, so we will spend another day here tomorrow and head out for our first adventure on Monday. In the meantime, we will spend time playing on the beach here at the marina and at Chandara Resort swimming. There was a full moon tonight. Can’t think of a better way to spend a day.
by Judy Handley | Jan 9, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 4, Thailand |
Day 79, Year 4: Less Than Five Hours ’til H, J, and S Arrive
Date: Friday, January 9, 2009
Weather: Partly Sunny
Location: Ao Po Grand Marina, Phuket Island, Thailand
It is 8:15 in the evening here and Heather, Jed, and Sam should arrive at 1 am. The excitement is building. We had a rental car starting at noon today and we did our food shopping in the afternoon. I think I have become a bit of a food shopping snob. The grocery stores here are modern, big, and beautiful, but the fresh fruit and vegetables are pitiful. I much prefer shopping in the local fruit and veggie stands. And after today, I won’t even think of buying fresh food in a supermarket in this
part of the world again. But regardless, we had a great afternoon and drove down to Ao Chalong to look for a really good flashlight. The marina manager here told us the only place on the island that we might find a really good flashlight (called a torch in this part of the world) would be in the dive shops in Ao Chalong. Well, we did find a really good waterproof LED flashlight, but it cost 23,000 Baht which is something like $700 US. No thanks! I guess we will continue our search and someday
find a really good flashlight at a more reasonable price. In the meantime we will continue exploring in the dark!
The weather is changing here. We have had almost ten days of gorgeous, sunny blue skies, but that came at the end of a few days of overcast, rainy weather. Well, the overcast rainy weather is returning. It is caused by an extreme high pressure system that moves down from China. The good thing is that Heather, Jed, and Sam will have a few days of relief from the intense sun when they first arrive, but the down side is that it will be windier and certainly not as beautiful as it is when the skies
are bright blue. But the beautiful weather will return while they are here and by the time it does, they should be used to the heat.
So in less than five hours we should be on our way from the airport to the marina. It will certainly be interesting to see Sam’s reaction to arriving at a boat. There’s a bit of wind tonight, so maybe it will rock him to sleep. We can only hope.
by Judy Handley | Jan 8, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 4, Thailand |
Day 78, Year 4: Ready and Waiting
Date: Thursday, January 8, 2009
Weather: Yet Another Beautiful, Sunny Day
Location: Ao Po Grand Marina, Phuket Island, Thailand
I awoke this morning realizing that we had rented a car for the wrong day. We have been so anxious for the arrival of Heather, Jed, and Sam that we somehow jumped a day and were prepared to go pick them up at 1 am on Friday. But they aren’t coming until 1 am on Saturday, so we had an extra day today to really take our time and get things just right. The first thing we did was call and cancel the car for today, but unfortunately we were misunderstood and the car that Tina and Robert had arranged
for was canceled. They got that worked out, but it delayed the start of their day a bit.
We then called Justin and Jo as they are now home from their Christmas vacation in England. They are working furiously to get ready for Jo’s art show opening at a gallery in Santa Fe. They already have the art work hung and they said it looks great. They were spending today practicing the music they will play at the opening. They had an appointment with the mid-wife that will deliver Wee Gerbil earlier in the day and everything looks great. So they are happy and both are loving living in Santa
Fe. It was so good to talk with them and hear them sound so happy. After the Skype call, I spent a good deal of today making granola and Mark got out the sewing machine and made a cover for our cockpit monitor and a new sun/rain shade for the v-berth hatch. Somehow we kept ourselves busy, busy all day long.
I feel like I’m getting ready for Christmas. The stockings aren’t hung by the chimney, but the v-berth is made and ready for Heather and Jed, the port settee is made-up as a bed for Sam with the lee cloth up to hold him in, the adorable little kiddie pool is on the back deck and his new UV head cover and body suit are hung and waiting for him , and a toy box filled with goodies for Sam is tucked in beside his “bunk”-beach toys, Duplo Legos, an envelope filled with stickers, a bag of new books, and
a couple of little trucks. The laundry is all done and Windbird is shiny both inside and out. So we really are ready and waiting.
Tomorrow we will get the rental car just before noon and head into Phuket Town to do the last minute shopping for food and miscellaneous boat “things.” There are always more boat “things” to purchase. We will then return to Windbird to get a few hours of sleep before we go to the airport just after midnight. We just hope that Heather and Jed are still speaking to us after the long, long flight from Boston to San Francisco to Seoul, Korea, and then here to Phuket. We so much wanted to share part
of our adventure with them, as we did with Justin and Jo, but so much travel time with a two year-old could be quite trying. If things are a bit rough, we will just have to make up for it once they arrive here in beautiful, beautiful Thailand.
by Judy Handley | Jan 7, 2009 | Sailing Logs Year 4, Thailand |
Day 77, Year 4: Meeting with Friends
Date: Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Weather: Another Beautiful, Sunny Day
Location: Ao Po Grand Marina, Phuket Island, Thailand
We spent much of today continuing to get Windbird ready for Heather, Jed, and Sam, but we also met up with our friends Tina and Robert of Shirena. They arrived midday and we had lunch with them at the little Muslim restaurant just past the marina entrance. We then met them at the Chandara Resort for a late afternoon swim in the pool and then cocktails and dinner. It was great to get to know their kids. Two of Robert’s and one of Tina’s grown kids have been sailing with them for the past week
or so. They are delightful and added immensely to make an enjoyable evening.
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.
