Day 42, Year 5: Malaysia to Thailand
Date: Monday, December 7, 2009
Weather: Very Warm; Variable Winds
Location: Koh Tarutao, THAILAND!!!

We left Kuah this morning with almost no wind. This allowed us to do some maneuvering to set the wind indicator which did not give us true readings all of last year. In order to do this, we needed to turn circles in absolutely calm waters so that the wind indicator on the top of the mast would automatically adjust itself to the correct setting. We were doing this today because while we were home in the US Mark bought a new remote control for the Auto Pilot and it suggested this maneuver. Now, hopefully, we will know the true wind direction.

We sailed west through the slot taking us to the west side of Langkawi, and then northeast to Koh Tarutao. We motored sailed with mainsail up, and then we sailed with main and headsail. Then we motored some more and sailed once again with main, headsail, and staysail. Then we put up the spinnaker. Once the spinnaker came down, we decided to motor sail with just the mainsail up to our destination. The good thing about the fluky winds is that we got to try all the different sail configurations on Windbird in one day. Everything was working great. The bad thing is that it was not an easy run. We had to keep changing sails. But we reached our destination in the late afternoon, had Robert and Tina of Shirena over for Happy Hour, and are now ready to travel on tomorrow. We explored this anchorage last year with our friends Kevin and Claire so we had no driving force to go ashore. Tomorrow we are headed to Ko Kradan. This is an island we have not visited before, but tomorrow is Tina’s birthday (as well as our son-in-law Jed’s) and she wants to have dinner at a restaurant there. Sounds like a great idea to us. We can celebrate two birthdays in one. So off we will go early in the morning.

091207 Day 42 Malaysia–Kuah Anchorage Memories