Day 125, Year 4: Nuts and Bolts . . . and Screws
Date: Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Weather: No Changes-Beautiful, Hot, and Sunny
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island

It was truly a shop ’til you drop kind of day. It is amazing how long it can take to find a few nuts and bolts and screws. And after an entire day of shopping, we found only a few that we need. So the search will continue. We did return to Rolly Tasker to buy new sheets for our headsail and a new halyard for our mainsail. For those of you who are not sailors, lines that take sails up and down are halyards and sheets are those lines that attach to the bottom of sails and pull them from one side of the boat to the other. Even though it was our second visit to Rolly Tasker, we were even more amazed by its size. We also drove back out toward Ratanachai to find a welding shop called Luck Steel. We wanted to get a second quote on having new frames made for our currently bronze ports. We can’t afford new ports, but if we can afford new frames they would look a lot better from the outside. Nop, our stainless guy here at the Boat Lagoon is super expensive (although he does excellent work) so we are just checking to see if we can get good work a bit cheaper.

While out shopping we saw Robyn of Scorpido doing the very last of her shopping before they leave Royal Phuket tomorrow morning. They are returning to Langkawi to stock up on duty-free alcohol and then heading across the Indian Ocean to the Chagos, Seychelles, Madagascar, and then South Africa. Their daughter is getting married in October back in the US so they will leave their boat in Richard’s Bay on the west coast of South Africa and head home for the wedding. Their daughter, Erica, was here recently and bought her wedding dress at one of the kicky little shops in the Royal Phuket complex. So Robyn and Eric will have a little Thailand with them for the wedding in Seattle. Equus will splash tomorrow morning and they are also headed to Langkawi. But from there they will be heading south to through Indonesia to the Kumai, the Komodos, Bali, and then across the Indian Ocean to Chagos and South Africa. So tomorrow morning we say farewell to Scorpido and Equus and hope to see them in the US once we return with Windbird. Fair sailing to both of these wonderful couples. We will miss you.

We started our day with a Skype call to our son Justin and his wife Jo and then to my sister Patsy. Skype is really getting a workout from us here and it is just so wonderful that it is free. Jo is looking a little pregnant and is feeling great. And all is well with my family back in the US, so that is a good thing. We also got an email today from our good friend and birder, Patsy Decker. After the posting of photos with yesterday’s log, she was able to positively identify our little bird friend as a young, male Brown-throated Sunbird. The other birds that I thought were finches are Eurasian Tree Sparrows. So Sawatdii Kha, Patsy.

090224 Day 125 Boat Lagoon, Phuket Thailand–Details, Details