Sunday 30^th January to Wednesday 9th February 2020

Something happened that I didn’t mention in my last post, which further delayed our departure from Phuket for the Maldives.

Hugh had a small lump on his left cheek for a month or two which he’d nicked shaving and it was still sore and not healing. When I finally got round to looking at it properly I, too, was not happy with its appearance and we decided it needed checking before we left Thailand. We had heard good reports of the Bangkok Hospital here in Phuket so phoned up and made an appointment to see a dermatologist the next day. Yes, really… the next day. At 9am we found ourselves seeing a young doctor who looked as if he should still be in school (we’re of that age) in the Phuket Plastic Surgery Institute. All the other clients there were gorgeous young Thai women, presumably wanting to improve on physical perfection, accompanied by ageing Western men. Dr Child Prodigy carefully examined Hugh’s lump and agreed it looked rather suspicious, so within an hour Hugh had had a punch biopsy, the tissue to be sent off to Bangkok and the result to be emailed to us within the week. All this for 8448 baht, ie less than £190. Depending on the result, Hugh would probably need a further excision.

We had planned to leave Phuket for the Maldives after the weekend but decided to stay on in Thailand, where the medical treatment seems to be excellent, until we had the result of the biopsy and for any further surgery to be done here. This meant trying to extend our Thai visas which were about to run out, if we could. A visit to Immigration and we were relieved to find that they were still granting 60 day ‘Covid extensions’.

Please skip the next paragraph if you don’t want to read a long, dreary whinge:

Two days later we got to Immigration early with the necessary three forms completed and a passport photograph (you can get that taken in a  room behind immigration by joining the right queue). After joining another queue to be asked ‘why is the address you’ve given not the same as the address you gave last time you were here?… but we won’t tell you what the first address was’,  then to a queue in the dreaded room 101 ‘where is form TM30 – notification of your address in Thailand?’. It was new to us but apparently Thai Immigration now wants to know exactly where every foreigner is staying and are clamping down on this requirement. When we drove back to the marina office to ask for a TM30 we found out that a boat is not an ok place to be staying, so ended up having to book a night in an apartment on the marina just to get our TM30 (although a night in a comfortable bed with air conditioning, a shower and no mosquitoes was not unwelcome). Back to Immigration and they were by now closed for lunch, so after a trip around Makro to stock up with more fruit and veg, we found ourselves back in the queue in room 101. This time we were missing a photocopy of the existing visas in our passports so after queuing to have this done, we queued again to have everything checked. Hoorah, it was all in order, so we were allocated a number and allowed to sit and wait until our number was called. It wasn’t too long a wait, we had our documents checked again and our photograph taken, paid our 1900 baht and… told to come back on Monday. No imploring would move her. I could understand the man in front of us in one of the queues who was having a complete melt down. 

And so with lump biopsied and visas extended we finally left the Boat Lagoon marina on a beautiful, still, sunny morning having filled the tanks with diesel and water and confident that everything that could possibly go wrong had been fixed. We were looking forward to a relaxing few days in one of the bays on the west of the island. As we motored south Hugh checked the engine and noticed an oily discharge coming from the front of it. Not a good sign. We anchored in Chalong Bay and the next morning Hugh got in touch with Craig at C&C Marine Engineering. By the afternoon Hugh had picked up two of his guys from the dock and in just over an hour the engine was sorted. What service!

Continuing on that afternoon we joined our friends on Endorphin Beta and Hecla of Uist in Nai Harn bay in the southwest corner of Phuket. We had been here almost two years ago as Phuket had started to empty of tourists due to Covid. Although it is quiet and unsophisticated compared with resorts like Patong, it is much busier now than in March 2020 and I counted 35 other yachts at anchor, with several wing-surfers zooming around the bay (which looks great fun).

Whilst anxiously waiting for the histology results from Hugh’s biopsy, we got on with boat jobs, preparing for the passage to the Maldives. Hugh had been looking at the PredictWind weather forecasting app that we use for passage planning. I checked through the grab bag and all the gadgets that should help us survive and be rescued should we have to abandon ship, we tried out our emergency satellite phone (succeeding in phoning my sister in Oxford) and, with Jon’s help, we got our new water maker working…. 5 litres of fresh drinking water in less that 5 minutes as opposed to over an hour with the old water maker. And it is petrol driven so no extra drain on the boat batteries.

In the early days before we bought Vega I gave Hugh a copy of ‘Voyaging on a Small Income’ by Annie Hill, a seminal work by a woman who had crossed the Atlantic with her husband in their 34 foot homemade sailing boat. Hugh loved the idea of the simple life, especially, strangely, living off dried pulses. Having read the chapter on ‘Managing without Refrigeration’ in Hal Roth’s ‘How to Sail around the World’ I decided, contrary to their philosophy, that a fridge was an absolutely basic necessity. Their other suggestions of greasing eggs with petroleum jelly and turning them every day to prolong their life and of making bread in a pressure cooker did not appeal either. Hugh and I did agree that buying a smaller boat with minimal equipment was the way to go… less to go wrong, less worry, less cost. Over the years, much as I love 37 foot Vega, I’ve come to wish we had a slightly larger boat, maybe 42 or 45 foot. It would sail a bit faster, so less time on passage, and a third cabin would mean more space for all the junk we’ve inevitably accumulated and for visitors. As it is our second, aft cabin is now full of spare sails, diving equipment, a paddle board, cockpit seats etc etc. A washing machine would be nice too (definitely no room on Vega for this) and so would a freezer. More equipment however means more drain on the batteries, which are recharged at anchor by solar panels and a wind generator. If the batteries run down too much it damages them so they must be constantly monitored and, if necessary, the engine run to top them up (noisy and it consumes precious diesel). I’d been after a small 12 volt freezer for a while and we had looked at them in Australia, but hadn’t been sure where we’d keep it and Hugh was worried it would be too much for the boat batteries. With so many things on the boat going wrong recently I wondered out loud what we’d do if our ten year old fridge was to break down and suggested that the freezer could operate as a fridge too. And it only uses 2.7 amps. I got my freezer! 

We hired a car on several occasions and Hugh has accomplished the art of driving like a Thai, weaving in and out of traffic, overtaking on the inside, managing to avoid the hoards of scooters and motorbikes (often with helmet-less kids balanced between their parent’s legs). We caught up with family and friends on video calls and ate out in Mama Seafood Ha Ha Ha! Restaurant, next to the beach. Tibby, recently arrived from Australia, and Rusty came down from the north of Phuket where they are doing up their boat, to meet us for lunch. 

Ten days after the biopsy we were back at the hospital seeing Dr Child Prodigy for what we now knew was a well-differentiated squamous cell carcinoma. You may remember that Hugh had one of these removed from his hand in Australia almost three years ago. It is not uncommon having had one to have further ones and as long as they are removed fairly early on they rarely spread elsewhere. It had not been completely excised by the initial punch biopsy so, as expected, he needed further minor surgery. At this point Dr CP started going on about it being in a high risk area and that one option was Mohs Surgery, which involves the skin cancer being removed a layer at a time and each layer being examined under a microscope right away, the layers progressively removed until all the cancer is gone. This would give a much better cosmetic result than the other option, a wide excision, but would have to be done at a hospital in Bangkok. Having been thoroughly freaked we then met the surgeon, Dr Voice of Experience. He was calm and reassuring…. ‘it’s only a squamous cell not a melanoma… I’ll get that off completely’ he pronounced cheerfully. I decided Hugh probably had enough excess skin to spare on the side of his face and a nip and tuck wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Twenty minutes later Hugh emerged looking rather shaken and complaining that he felt like half his face had been removed but he had been told that we could now ‘go sailing’.

That morning Endorphin and Hecla had left for the ten day sail to the Maldives and we anticipated being only three days behind them. We went to get a PCR test, as required for entry into the Maldives, and decided to check out of Thailand on Monday. Whilst having a cup of tea in Starbucks (I’m rather ashamed to admit we’ve become regulars) we heard the news that Endorphin were on their way back to Nai Harn bay having found a worrying amount of play in their rudder stock. They would have to go back into the marina and be lifted out of the water to get this fixed. We were gutted for them. 

Checking out of Thailand at the Phuket Yacht Control Centre at the end of Chalong Pier took a mere three hours. Two delightful young women, despairing at our slowness on their computer, helped us fill in our departure details. We then waited for Immigration to drive down from Phuket Town to deal with us and the other cruiser (a single handed Brit) who was also checking out that day. Having gone through our paperwork and stamped our passports he finally requested a photo of himself handing over a complementary bottle of water to Hugh. Another wait as the Customs guy then drove down. It appeared that one of our forms was missing. An anxious wait whilst this was tracked down to Ditapong, the manager at the Premier Boat Yard where Vega had spent so long, who promised to deliver it the next day. Officially we were now checked out of Thailand and were expected to leave by the next morning.

The next morning Hugh was not happy. The new freezer had not been freezing the items we’d put into it the previous afternoon and was such a drain on the batteries we’d had to run the engine several times and to turn it off overnight. We decided the compressor had packed up so it had to go back. To cut a long story short, we returned to the chandlery in the marina, they ran it and we agreed it was working. It is probably that the ambient temperature on the boat is so high during the day, in the high 30s (and much more when you leave a pan of chick peas boiling for several hours when you go to Immigration, as I had… more signs of imminent senility… the chick peas were charcoal and the pan ruined but at least the boat hadn’t burnt down) that the freezer can’t handle it. We have it back now, hoping it will allow more interesting meals on passage without adding to our stress. At least the visit to the Boat Lagoon marina gave us the chance for a coffee with Colin and Izzi who were being remarkably sanguine about their return to Phuket and the further work on Endorphin. They had heard from Jon, solo-handed on Hecla and still on passage to the Maldives, that he’d swam underneath his boat at night as it was going so slowly in strong winds he thought there must be something caught on his keel. He found nothing so had a shower, a cup of tea and went to bed.

We’re getting ready to leave this morning, hoping that there won’t be any more delays and by the time you read this we’ll be on our way to the Maldives. Ten or twelve days at sea, depending on the wind. I hope my next post will be about a perfect passage and snorkelling in paradise rather than things going wrong with boats.