Day 48, Year 5: Not Yet in Phuket
Date: Sunday, December 13, 2009
Weather: E Winds 8 knots
Latitude: N 07 degrees 44.700 minutes
Longitude: E 098 degrees 45.692 minutes
Location: Ko Phi Phi Don, Yongkasem Beach, Thailand
Here we still sit off Monkey Beach in Phi Phi Don. It was a beautiful day and we just decided to stay. This was precipitated by a call from Tina saying she would like to stay another day and it didn’t take too much arm twisting to get us to go along with this.
Mark had an agenda anyway. He wanted to work on our electrical system. We have not been able to get enough of a charge out of batteries as we thought we should and Mark thought it was because there was a problem with the way our two alternators are tied together. But when he started investigating he discovered that our largest alternator wasn’t working at all. So as always with boat work, one thing led to another and he replaced our 220 amp alternator with a 125 amp spare. Our little one is an 80 amp alternator and thankfully it has kept us going for the past couple of weeks. Once the replacement was made, Mark tried to start the engine. Nothing. We kept trying and kept getting nothing. And then he realized he had pressed the emergency stop switch on the side of the engine to test it, but it must have stuck. Once he joggled that, the engine started right up and we seem to be charging once again. Mark also installed some hardware on the mast that has to do with our lazy jacks, and it was now lunch time.
While all of this was going on, I assisted Mark when I could and worked on cataloging the last bits of food onboard that hadn’t already been put into the spreadsheet. At the end of the day, I completed that job. So now I know what is here so I can make better decisions on what needs to be purchased.
One of the reasons we decided to stay today was to make a trip ashore. On this north side of Phi Phi Don, you can only go to shore on a rising tide so we had to wait until 4:30 to go in. While waiting, we tried out the new underwater housing for the Sanyo video camera. Mark was able to get some shots of the pink and red soft coral here. Tomorrow when we download the photos and video, we will evaluate the quality. I am just happy that we got any shots underwater, but hopefully the quality is really good. So camera tested, and tide rising, we headed to shore. There is a very deep area of reef off the north beach of Phi Phi Don, but we went slowing and finally had to row the last bit. We immediately met Robert and Tina onshore and Tina and I did a bit of window shopping while Mark and Robert tagged along and talked only of boat repairs. When we had checked every little shop, we stopped at the same restaurant that we had dinner with Heather, Jed, and Sam last year. With Sam we had picked that restaurant because he could play in the sand on the beach just inches from our table. This time it was nostalgia that led us there. We just pretended that Sam was here and playing in the sand!
Early tomorrow morning we really will head for Ao Chalong in Phuket. Unless we can think of another excuse to keep ourselves out here in the islands.
