Day 70, Year 5: Another Marathon Shopping Day
Date: Monday, January 4, 2010
Weather: Thin Layer of Clouds Overhead; NE Winds 10-15
Location: Nai Harn Bay, Phuket Island, Thailand
The cost of renting a car here is about $30 US a day, so when we rent one we feel like we have to use it to its fullest. So that means twelve hour days shopping and making multiple trips back to home base so we can schlep bags and boxes down to the beach, into the dinghy, out to Windbird, and then go back and start again. The trunk of small cars will only hold so much, so that is the reason for the multiple trips in and out. Ed and Lynne picked us up at 8 am and off to shore we went.
We made a stop in Ao Chalong to buy extra jerry jugs for dinghy fuel that we will need in the Chagos and then we went to Makro. This is like a Costco and neither of us had been there before. We found some good buys on a few staples and were glad that we had made the stop. There were some items on our list that they didn’t have, however, so we knew we needed to make another super market stop sometime during the day. Next stop was Farang Foods to pick up the last 11 kilos of rolled oats for our granola. That’s 22 pounds and we already have that much onboard, but that’s how much it will take for ten months. We can run out of many things, but granola is not one of them. We picked up Ed and Lynne’s India visa and drove into downtown Phuket to the Siam Bank to check on the status of the money transfer we made to the British Indian Ocean Territories just before Christmas. We still have not heard from BIOT, so we knew we needed to check. Good thing. When the young women we dealt with us saw us walking to her desk, she nodded her head and got an envelope out of a drawer to hand to us. It was our money as the transfer never went through. There was one section of the form that asked for an address for BIOT, but there is no address, so we just put UK. Well, that wasn’t good enough, so we left with our money, knowing we would need to return once we have the information needed.
By this time it was noon, our trunk was full, and we needed to get back to Nai Harn to load the dinghy with the morning’s haul, get that out to our boats, and then get all of our empty jerry cans and take them back to shore to start the runs to the petrol station to fill the cans with diesel. The petrol station is not close, so it was 3:30 by the time Mark and Ed got back with the first load of filled jerry cans. That didn’t give us enough time for the second run and still get to Phuket town to get to the bank. So we changed the plans. Ed and Lynne really didn’t need to go back to town, so Mark and I took off in our dinghy. The plan wasn’t quite perfect because the bank was closed by the time we got there, but we did get the remainder of our food shopping completed, found a few obscure items we have been searching for, and got another round of fuel. We got back to the beach after dark and at dead low tide which is the hardest for hauling things down the beach, but we got back to Windbird safe and sound. We checked with the car rental company and they will let us keep the car until 10:30 in the morning at no additional cost. That will give us the chance to run back into town to the bank and try once again to get the BIOT money transfer successfully completed. This pays for the privilege of anchoring in the Chagos for two months, so we hope this next attempt works out.
There was no word from Shirena on the Net this morning but we are assuming they are just in a skip zone and that we will hear from them in a day or so. Wild Card came through, but so faintly that someone almost to the Maldives had to relay. We got an email from our friends Jean and Ken on Renaissance 2000 and they have reached Cape Town. They did a very fast run from Richard’s Bay to Cape Town in four 24-hour days plus nine hours. They were racing to beat bad weather and they made it, but the other boat that left when they did battled ugly weather for eight hours before reaching the destination. We know that Piet Hein and Tory on Double Dutch made it to Cape Town on December 31. So now we just need to hear from Mata’irea. I’m still having a hard time believing that it is going to be a full year before we get there, but I think I’d better get used to the idea. You can’t battle with Mother Nature and win, so we’ll just have to enjoy the year waiting for that good weather.
