16 December 2015 Ko Rok Nok, Thailand
Most of our morning was taken up with a scuba dive. We dropped our dinghy anchor about ½ mile to the east of our mooring and descended to 20 metres along a sloping reef. It wasn’t the most interesting dive that I’ve done, but it was good to suck some compressed air again after a two month layoff.
After lunch, we took the dinghy over to another snorkelling spot to the west of us and had a look around. Again, it wasn’t that interesting - mostly rock and hard corals. I entertained myself taking pictures of Christmas Tree worms again.
In the evening, I finally finished my Christmas Song book. I’ve cut down the number of songs from 50 to just over 30 carols and pop songs. The rest are either boring or too difficult and would need more practise than we’re prepared to do. All we need to do now is learn to play them.
17 December 2015 Ko Rok Nok to Ao Chalong, Phuket
We were up at the crack of dawn with over 50 miles to go. We motored out between the two islands of Rok Nok, which was a little nerve wracking because there are no depth soundings shown on our Navionics charts.
Fortunately, we had Google Earth satellite images using “OvitalMap” which is a superb iPad application, allowing you to store Google Earth Images and view them when off-line. It also has a simple tracking function allowing us to see our position and our most recent track. Using the satellite images, we were able to see the deeper water and the reefs and saw nothing less than 10 metres through the channel.
We had a cracking sail all day. The wind was fairly consistent at 15-20 knots albeit forward of the beam, but the seas were fairly flat and it was idyllic sailing. We motored the last three miles into the huge bay of Ao Chalong and anchored at 07°49.09N 098°21.48E outside the huge fleet of yachts at anchor and on moorings.
The wind was still fairly strong and there was a fetch of over a mile to the nearest land so we were bobbing about in the 2 foot waves - not the best anchorage that we’ve been in, but the holding seems to be very good.
18 December 2015 Ao Chalong to Nai Harn Bay, Phuket
It was a restless night with the boat pitching most of the time. Then at dawn, the local long-tail boats started to chug noisily around, so I was up early. After breakfast, we jumped in the dinghy and went for a quick visit to “Back Chat” to get some local knowledge. I’m glad that we went there before clearing in because they reminded me to turn on our AIS, which is now obligatory in Thailand.
We made our way to the huge Ao Chalong Jetty, which sticks out ½ mile from shore. There are lots of floating docks alongside the main pier, but the waves from the long fetch make it a fairly hazardous place to leave an inflatable dinghy, so everyone pulls their dinghies up onto the dock, which is a little bizarre.
Having dragged our heavy dinghy onto the dock and made it secure; we walked up to the very impressive Yacht Service Centre on the jetty. This is a circular building housing the Port Captain, Immigration, Customs and Quarantine and makes life very simple. Signs told us to go into a reception where we were shown to a computer and had to enter the boat’s details and the crew members.
After that it was a very simple process of walking from one office to the next to fill in in a few more forms and sign everything. The Port Captain’s office has a computer showing the AIS positions of all boats in the area, so I’m glad that I had it switched on - I’ve heard that other yachties have had to go back to their boats to switch their AIS on. All our paperwork was in order, so we were finished in 30 minutes, which is a miracle.
We were highly amused by the very severe looking lady in the Port Captain office, who pointed at me every time she spoke to me saying “you”. In Malaysia and Indonesia, it is considered to be extremely rude to point and we’ve grown used to being very careful with our hand signals in case we offend people, so this lady’s forceful pointing was quite a shock at first.
With our formalities done, we walked along the long pier and stepped into Thailand. The first thing that we noticed is that the written language is totally incomprehensible and the spoken language is extremely hard because every word can be spoken with four different tones each having a different meaning. I spent all day trying to learn how to say “Thank you” in Thai and everyone seemed to say it slightly differently, so we don’t hold up much hope of being able to speak the language.
However, we’re in Phuket, which is very touristy, so many people speak a smattering of English and most of the restaurants have pictures for each of their dishes, so we won’t starve. We managed to pick up a SIM card and 4.5GB data at a small shop on the main road, which wasn’t too much hassle.
We then trudged around for an hour getting a feel for the place and ended up in a posh restaurant for our first Thai meal. It cost us £15 for both of us - a lot more than we’d have paid in Malaysia, but they had a menu in English, so we felt a bit safer than trying to buy street food. The meals were fabulous - Glenys had a seafood salad smothered with Cilantro and I had a Coconut Curry with Pork - having been in Muslim countries for so long, we've been craving pork.
After a wander around a big supermarket, we lugged our shopping a mile back to the pier and back to the boat. As we were unloading the dinghy, Nigel on a nearby yacht called me over and told me that a yacht (“Venture”) had broken free of its mooring and hit Alba on the port side. He’d got on board and had managed to drop the anchor, so “Venture” was just downwind of us. Nigel had no idea who the boat belonged to, but its Thai registered.
I had a look at our damage which is not too bad, there’s a dent and a split in our teak toe rail, a bent stanchion and a few broken strands in one of our lifelines. “Venture” must have hit us bow on, so most of the impact has been taken by the toe rail and the lifelines. I dinghied over to “Venture” and found that their washboard wasn't locked properly and left a business card on their galley with a request asking the owner to contact me by email.
I thought through the situation and decided that the owner really ought to come out and check that his boat is anchored properly, so I went into the Port Captain’s office to see if they knew the owner’s name and contact details. After 30 minutes of messing about, all they could do is to give me the name of the company that owns the boat and that was all in Thai script, so no damn use at all.
The anchorage continued to be rough all day, so we upped anchor and motored around to Nai Harn Bay and anchored in 13 metres of water at 07°46.31N 098°18.11E. It’s only seven miles from Ao Chalong, but is a beautiful, big bay which is well protected from the north-east. There’s a small island to the south of the bay, white sand beaches on the main shore and the water is fairly clear - at last a decent anchorage in Thailand.
Once we were settled, I had a brainwave and sent an email to the two yacht clubs in Ao Chalong asking about the owner of “Venture”. Brent from the Phuket Cruising Club soon replied giving me the owner's name (Peter) and a telephone number. As we hadn't bought a SIM card for our phone, I tried to talk to Peter by Skype, but the connection was very poor and frustrating. He knew about the boat dragging and was sending someone out to sort it out. Peter said that he’d pay for any damage to Alba and I’ll try to get hold of him tomorrow.
There was a pleasant breeze in the anchorage, so we had a quiet night in and watched a movie.
19 December 2015 Nai Harn Bay, Phuket
It’s such a pleasant anchorage that we relaxed for the morning, catching up on a few chores and admin. I managed to have a short conversation with Peter from "Venture" and I've now got his email address - I'll give him a ring when we get a SIM card for our phone.
In the afternoon, we went for a snorkel on the west point of the small island in the bay, but it was all rock, scoured by the south-west storms in the south-west monsoon. We went around to the north side, where it was more interesting, but the water is very murky.
It was another cool, breezy evening, so Glenys turned on the oven for the first time in months and we had Chicken Enchiladas while watching a movie - luxury.
20 December 2015 Nai Harn Bay to Kata Noi Beach, Phuket
Nai Harn Bay is a pleasant anchorage, but there’s nothing ashore apart from a busy beach, so we decided to go a few miles further around the coast to Kata Noi Beach, where there’s a little holiday town. The wind was against us most of the way, but it only took us an hour and we were soon anchoring off the beach at 07°49.24N 098°17.58E, next to “Back Chat”.
We took the dinghy ashore and beached it next to a small ramp amongst the hundreds of holiday makers sunning themselves on the magnificent white beach. The small town is totally geared up to tourists with souvenir shops, bars, restaurants and massage parlours. We strolled around for an hour and finally found a 7-11 store which only sells snacks, sun tan lotion and drinks. We bought a few cans of beer and gave up.
Back at the beach, we stopped off at one of the many little food stalls set up with plastic tables and chairs where we had a reasonable meal costing 220 Bhat (£7) - not quite Malaysian prices, but cheap enough and tasty.
We had a quiet afternoon on board - well, apart from the para-sail boat zooming by and the endless stream of jet skis using us as a turning point.
The para-sail operation looked decidedly dodgy. Instead of launching the parachute from a platform on the back of the boat, they launched it from the beach, with one of the staff hanging on the lines behind the tourist. This guy then sat on the spreaders for the ten minute ride going several hundred feet up in the air without any harness or safety lines. He then hung from the spreaders by his arms as the parachute landed on the beach. The Elf and Safety wouldn't like this in the UK or New Zealand.
Irvin and Jenny from “Back Chat” came over for a beer or two at sunset. Later after dinner, Glenys and I sat in the cockpit and practised a few Christmas songs, which proved to be a little challenging because we had to fight against the Ibiza rave music blasting out of the Club Med resort ashore.
21 December 2015 Kata Noi Beach to Nai Harn Bay, Phuket
With only four shopping days to go to Christmas, we went ashore to buy each other Christmas presents. As usual, we set a maximum spend limit, on the basis that if we want something then we buy it immediately and there’s no point in cluttering up the boat with unwanted presents. This year, we agreed 500 Bhat (£16) - it’s not normally this high, but we were going to have to pay tourist prices in the shops in this little holiday town. It didn’t take long to buy few things in the souvenir shops and, after an hour, I’d bought four presents for Glenys and come in just under budget.
There was some swell coming into the anchorage from the north-west, so after lunch, we motored back around to Nai Harn Bay. It was a little bit better than Kata Noi - I don’t know where this swell is coming from. I spent most of the afternoon composing and sending out over a hundred emails containing our latest Christmas card - it’s a laborious job, but a good way to keep in touch with people that we don’t see very often.
In the evening, we ran through our thirty Christmas songs again and the tunes in my little song book are starting to sound correct. I’ll be glad when Christmas is over and I can get back to playing some normal music on the guitar.
22 December 2015 Nai Harn Bay to Ao Chalong, Phuket
In the morning, we motored around to Ao Chalong Bay to run some errands. The anchorage was much, much calmer without the strong north-east winds that we had a few days ago.
After lunch, we slogged down the long Ao Chalong Jetty and wandered around in the beating sun, getting a SIM card for our mobile phone and checking out the cost of hiring a scooter next week - 250 Bhat (£8) per day including insurance. We tried to get some US dollars to take to Myanmar, but that doesn't seem to be possible other than at the airport.
We trudged one kilometre down the main road to the Macro supermarket to buy a few last minute bits and pieces and found that the licensing laws don’t allow the sale of alcohol between 14:00 and 17:00, which was a bit of a blow. On the way back, we stopped off at a local drinks wholesaler and discovered that they don’t care about the licensing laws and sold us a box of wine and a case of beer - we can have a Merry Christmas again.
We were exhausted by the time we staggered back to the boat and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to cool down in the blistering, airless heat.