Wednesday 5th to Sunday 30th January 2022

After our all too short trip around the hongs, we went back into the Boat Lagoon Marina. There are certainly worse places to be. With the boat out of the water on hard standing, we moved into a very comfortable air conditioned apartment and opened the curtains each morning to a view of the boats in the marina. The sun shone every day and it was not nearly so hot and humid (or maybe we are just getting used to the heat), a maximum 30 to 31 degrees most days. It is bright with palm trees and bougainvillea, has a good, albeit pricey, selection of restaurants and a great swimming pool. But having tasted life at anchor, a cool breeze, jumping off the back of the boat into a warm sea, the possibility of new places to explore, we just wanted to be out of there.

In the meantime work continued on Vega as we needed to make sure that she is in the best possible condition to tackle the long onward passages across the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. Vega’s teak decks and gunwales had been looking rather worn so we had them sanded and repaired by Miss Nai and her team, world-renowned for her work on teak decks. The prop shaft also needed checking and unfortunately it was found that the stern tube, cutlass bearing and shaft seal all needed replacing. More delay as a new stern tube was made up for us from a solid lump of bronze and some parts had to come from Canada. With the boat out of the water in the boat yard the jammed stopcock in the wash basin could be fixed. The Sea Talk that had stopped working whilst we were in the hongs was sorted. The list of jobs continued to build and we also needed to provision for the next stage of our voyage, to the Maldives.

We had been undecided as to whether to complete the voyage home via the Red Sea, in which case we could be in the Med by April, or to take the longer route around South Africa, which would mean we won’t be back in Bristol until May 2023 at the earliest. There are pros and cons of both routes. The Red Sea needs to be tackled between February and March and it would mean difficult sailing into strong headwinds for several weeks, busy shipping lanes and a lot of motoring. Although Somali pirates no longer seem to be a problem for yachts, it is hard to get insurance to cover this route – our insurance company, Admiral, declined us. Djibouti welcomes yachts but there is political instability in Yemen, Eritrea has closed its borders to tourism, Sudan has had a recent military coup and stopping in Egypt can be difficult. On the other hand the South African route meant tackling the Mozambique Channel with potentially dangerous winds and currents. 

We had mulled it over throughout December and finally came to a decision….. home via South Africa. As opposed to a very brief stop in the Maldives on the way west to the Red Sea, this alternative route would allow several months cruising from north to south through the atolls of the Maldives, a few weeks in May in the isolated Chagos Archipelago (the British Indian Ocean Territories) and then on to the fabulous Seychelles (and a visit home in June/July from there) before heading south towards South Africa in September/October. Although Madagascar is closed to visiting yachts due to Covid, there is the option of a safari in South Africa as well as a visit to Namibia to look forward to. After this, in early 2023, across the South Atlantic with stops in St Helena and Ascension Island to the Caribbean, and back to the U.K. via the Azores. All very exciting albeit rather daunting.

The apartment was filling up with provisions for our voyage ahead after several trips to Makro, Big C and the Food Hall at Central Mall. Just how many tins of baked beans, pasta sauce and sweetcorn and packets of muesli will we need over the next four months (we hear that provisioning in the Maldives is not good) and how much can we fit into our lockers? As a strict Muslim country it is nigh impossible to buy alcohol in the Maldives except in the resorts, so that necessitated quite a few trays of Chang beer. Although we had sorted through the boat and have given bags of clothes, old lifejackets, books and ‘stuff’ to a local charity, space is still at a premium on our little boat.

Our Christmas present to each other had been a water maker. When we set off on the voyage in July 2015 we had bought a small Katadyn water maker which produces 5 litres an hour of fresh water from seawater by reverse osmosis, and which is fitted into a cupboard under the galley sink. We’ve always seen it as an emergency backup and as we travel around the world one of the first tasks when we arrive in a new port is to refill our water tanks (which hold 400 litres in total), sometimes necessitating several dinghy trips to shore. Fresh water has always needed to be conserved especially on passage, with showers and clothes washing strictly limited, occasionally supplementing this with rainwater collected in buckets should there be a tropical downpour. Now we have a monster petrol fuelled Rainman water maker which will produce a wonderful 75 litres an hour, so there will be showers three times a day should we choose! Bliss!

We took a day off from boat chores for a four hour hike through Khao Phra Thaeo National Park, the only remaining virgin rainforest in Phuket Island. Starting from the Ton Sai waterfall, along a rough and at times slippery track we climbed up steeply initially, then continued through dense rainforest and giant bamboo to the Bang Pae waterfall, 5km away, accompanied by a dog called Kow. Our guide was the aptly named Wit who kept us entertained with interesting facts and silly jokes. When stopping to identify a rubber tree he threw in that 15 million condoms are used every day worldwide. (Did you know that the British are the second heaviest users of condoms in the world? Who are the first? The answer is at the end of this post). Wit showed us his invisible tattoo which had protected him from the tsunami…. (he was in Chiang Mai at the time… ho ho……it was hilariously funny when he told it). He pointed out vanilla plants, spiders, cicada mounds, a sandalwood tree (which it is forbidden to fell, even on your own land), fungi, rare palm trees, a huge centipede etc.  There are wild boar, mouse deer, langurs, gibbons and porcupines here as well as many species of rare birds and reptiles but they were keeping well out of our way. Even the Gibbon Rehabilitation Centre was closed, so after drying off from a soaking under the waterfall, we went for a late lunch of Thai curry at a roadside restaurant not usually catering to tourists. 

We visited the Phuket Town night market one Sunday evening to try the street food. There were stalls set out along the length of the street selling all sorts of delicacies. It was packed with tourists trying to decide whether to sample the barbecued meat, deep-fried insects, flossy shrimps, sushi or Chinese dumplings and so, with Covid rates rising in Phuket, we grabbed some stir-fried noodles and rather chewy squid, ate in the shelter of a doorway whilst listening to a couple busking, and headed back to the relative safety of the marina. 

Phuket was growing on us. The Thai people we’ve encountered are charming, friendly, cheerful and helpful, with a wry sense of humour. The standard of workmanship has on the whole been excellent here and although a lot of the work on the boat hasn’t always been cheap, it has at least usually been less than U.K. prices. Although I had intended to learn some Thai we never got much beyond hello ‘sawasdee ka’, and thank you, ‘khaawp khun ka’… my attempts after that were met with blank looks or giggles. Our neighbour in the marina, Andy, a retired pilot, tried to persuade us to stay on here. He had arrived on a circumnavigation 25 years ago and has never left, living on the marina in his spacious motor cruiser and with a Thai girlfriend. Although it would be easy to get a long-term retirement visa we are both in agreement that we have no desire to join the expat community here. We would miss family and friends too much and I’m not sure I’d ever get used to the heat.

As the Red Sea contingent, including several boats we know, Golden Spirit, PawPaw and Tallulah Ruby, headed off in a mass exodus west from Thailand and Malaysia on January 15^th, we were still waiting for boat parts to arrive from Canada. Some of our sailing friends were still around though. On Christmas Eve, Jon on Hecla had arrived in Phuket from Malaysia and had to quarantine for 7 days. Colin and Izzi on Endorphin Beta are planning to return to Scotland via South Africa, as is Jon to England, and we should be seeing them along the way. Our Australian friends on Entice, Kitty Hawk and Satori 2, last seen in March 2020 when we all escaped home from Phuket, had returned from Oz in the New Year.  They are getting their boats, which are still in the Premier Boat Yard, in shape to sail home. So we have had company and have met up for drinks and meals on the beach and in the marina.

We heard the dreadful news about the volcano erupting in Tonga. We had spent time there in 2017 and remember the unspoilt beauty of the islands and the laid back friendliness of the people, as well as swimming with humpback whales being one of the highlights of our trip. Whilst we can only imagine the devastation and suffering there, it is at least good to know that the whales would be in Antarctica at the time of the eruption as they only breed in Tongan waters from July to October. Phuket has been unaffected of course, as it borders the Andaman Sea and Indian Ocean, and it appears to have largely recovered from the destruction caused by the tsunami in December 2004.  

At last all the work on the boat was finished and Vega went back on the water. A final hiccup as one of the three bilge pumps that we have on the boat stopped working. The bilge pumps are rather important as they pump water which is leaking into the boat, say from a split pipe or a failed through-hull fitting, out again. We have two electric bilges and an emergency manual one. That fixed (it was a blocked outlet pipe) we finished stocking up with fresh fruit and veg and early on a still, sunny Sunday morning we finally left the marina on a rising tide to negotiate the shallow channel out. 

We still need to have a PCR test and officially check out of Thailand, and then, when the weather forecast looks right (ie. enough wind so we don’t have to motor most of the way), we plan to head west towards Uligan in the north of the Maldives, skirting the southern tip of Sri Lanka which is no longer considered a safe stop due to Covid. It should be about a ten to twelve day trip.

(Answer to condom quiz: The Chinese.)