Day 126, Year 4: Big Day Tomorrow
Date: Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Weather: No Changes-Beautiful, Hot, and Sunny
Location: Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket Island

We feel a bit like expectant parents on the eve of birth. Why is having a boat painted so very different from having a house painted? I don’t know the answer to the question, but I’ve painted lots of houses and never felt like I feel tonight. The top coats go on Windbird’s hull tomorrow and we are really jittery. We’ll probably sit outside the tent tomorrow as Oh and his crew paint, just like being in the waiting room of a hospital delivery room. Of course, the result will be nothing so wonderful and fantastic as a newborn baby, but it will be our old baby with a new fa�ade. Right now Windbird stands ready. We’re having second thoughts about the location of the waterline and we’re a little apprehensive about the weather as we have had lightening tonight. The last time this happened, we had cloudy weather here and rain a few miles to the south. You really don’t want to apply top coat if there is even a threat of rain, so we could be delayed by a day. And we’ll just have to be at the boat very early in the morning to talk to Oh if we want to move that waterline. So we’ll just have to see what the morning brings.

Equus was launched early this morning with a bang. Thankfully the ‘bang’ was just the lighting of Chinese firecrackers to ward off any evil spirits. The launch went smoothly and Patti and Steve sailed south to Ao Chalong to check out of Thailand. Just after they launched, we walked over to Royal Phuket to say farewell to Robyn and Eric on Scorpido. Their boat looks great and they were just so excited to be off for South Africa. We also stopped by Freebird to say farewell as they will be leaving tomorrow morning. They are sailing in the area for the season, so we will probably see them again before we come home to the US for a few months, but it was great to touch base with them today. We really don’t know any of these people very well, but they feel like family. Out here, friends sail in and out of our lives but there is a very strong bond that ties us together. Even before we meet, we have so many things in common that no one else in the world would even understand. So world cruisers are a special lot and we value each and every friendship we make.

Last night we walked across the highway to the super good, super cheap little ‘restaurant’ that we have gone to a couple of other evenings. The owner/cook is a woman who exudes such powerful, positive vibes and her food is just delicious. We tell her to bring us ‘whatever’ and it is always wonderful and the cost is unbelievably cheap. So we had a great farewell dinner with Steve and Patti and their good friend Larry. Larry is a single-hander who now works here in the East Marine Chandlery at Boat Lagoon. He met Patti and Steve in the Mediterranean and sailed south through the Red Sea with them. So they have all come from the US from west to east and known each other for a long time. On our way to dinner, we saw David and Doreen Samuelson of Swan sitting by the launch area watching their African Gray parrot enjoy the evening sitting in the tree beside them. David is the rigger here at Boat Lagoon and he and Doreen have been cruisers since they were in their early twenties. They know no other life. David is from England and Doreen is from France. They bought a Westsail in the early 1970’s and then bought their current boat, a Swan named Swan, in 1979. They started their trek around the world and have made it this far in thirty years. What amazing people! And they are good friends with a woman who is a good friend of the people from whom we bought Windbird. It is just such a small world.

Today we had lunch with Ley and Neil of Crystal Blues from Melbourne, Australia. They are having their boat painted by a different contractor just a few tents away from Windbird. They left Australia in October of 2005 at the same time that we left the US, but unlike us, they have been in this area of the world since then and they are just a wealth of information. They are living in a rental home not far from here, so they returned tonight and we had dinner at our same favorite place across the highway. We’ll travel up to their neighborhood for dinner on Friday. We really look forward to getting to know them better.

So stay tuned for the progress report on Windbird. And hope with us that all goes well tomorrow.

090225 Day 126 Boat Lagoon, Phuket, Thailand–Ready and Waiting