Wednesday 22^nd December 2021 to Wednesday 5^th January 2022

We were ready to leave the marina. The riggers had been the previous day and we were happy that all the angles and tensions on the rigging were adjusted correctly and our mast was unlikely to fall down. I’d picked up our laundry, we’d filled the water tanks and we had enough food to last for the next ten days. 

Then the steering wheel seized! It just wouldn’t budge. Having tried everything Hugh called in one of the guys from Precision Engineering but he couldn’t get the jammed pin to move either. Eventually a phone call from another engineer who advised a clever trick with two nuts to get enough torsion on the jammed pin, and it was free. Too late by now to leave that day as the channel in and out of the marina is tidal and only accessible around high tide.

The next day, the 23^rd,  we filled up with diesel and were off sailing (well, motoring) at last, almost seven weeks after arriving in Phuket. It was about 50 miles to Koh Lanta where we were to meet friends Colin and Izzi on SV Endorphin Beta for a Christmas Day meal, so we broke the journey half way, anchoring for the night at Koh Phi Phi. As we arrived Hugh spotted that the red light on the bilge pump indicator had come on and, checking the bilges, they were filling up with water. Where was the water coming from and were we about to sink? With visions of driving Vega onto the beach to prevent her from going to the bottom of the the bay, we started lifting floorboards to find the source. I was volunteered to taste the water…. fresh not salt. Phew! It turned out to be a leak in the water pump that pressurises our fresh water tank to the galley sink and wash basin. We emptied the rear cabin to gain access to the engine compartment and Hugh spent an enjoyable evening replacing the pump with the spare that we carry. Just a few expletives were heard, as, like most jobs, it was not as simple at it should have been.

Surely nothing else could go wrong now? Or could it?…….

We arrived on Christmas Eve in Kan Tiang bay in the south of the island of Koh Lanta, where Colin and Izzi on Endorphin Beta were already at anchor. We had supper on their boat, a beautifully prepared charcuterie, and watched the fireworks and fire juggling on the beach. It was wonderful to be back at anchor, gently rocking and with a soft breeze. I slept well that night.

On Christmas Day, after exchanging presents, we went ashore for a walk up into the hills above the small village and in the evening we had drinks on the beach with our friends and watched a most spectacular sunset, before a fabulous meal in a rather upmarket resort restaurant. Sea bass for me and tuna for Hugh. Zoom and FaceTime calls with our various family in the U.K. and with my daughter in Estonia made us feel rather sad to not be with them this year. 

Setting sail on Boxing Day the wind finally came up so we tried to unfurl the genoa. It was stuck. The furling drum at the base of the foresail was completely jammed. We motored to nearby Ko Ha Yai, a cluster of small, rocky islets and snorkelled to the tiny beach there. There were schools of silver, yellow and blue fish. It was bliss being back in the warm water again. 

Continuing towards the north of Ko Lanta the message ‘Seatalk Failure’ appeared on our binnacle display. The automatic steering wasn’t working, nor were the instruments showing wind speed or boat speed. We hand steered to the next bay where Colin came over to Vega and helped sort the jammed sail… a loose knot inside the furling drum was preventing the genoa from unfurling. The Seatalk problem proved harder to fix as the next morning we couldn’t find any loose connections in the wiring, so it will have to wait until we’re back in the marina.

Our next stop was Railay Beach. One of the more spectacular settings with limestone rock formations and a beautiful sandy beach. A stunning anchorage but not a particularly peaceful one with numerous noisy longtail boats speeding back and forth across the bay all day and late into the evening, mostly taking tourists to and from the beach. We explored the resort, a busy spot with numerous hotels, said hello to the monkeys living there (crab-eating macaques and spectacled langurs) and scrambled up a steep slope to a look out point with a wonderful view over the bays. 

The number of tourists has been gradually increasing over the weeks that we’ve been here and during the Christmas period there were a majority of Thai tourists. The Thai government has been sponsoring local tourism and Thai visitors to Phuket can get a discount on the cost of their hotels. 

Colin and Izzi arrived in Railay a day after us and were due to meet us on the beach for margaritas. We watched as they dinghied over from Endorphin and suddenly stopped dead. They had run over a partially submerged mooring line floating just below the surface of the water which had wrapped itself around their propellor and broken the gear mechanism on their outboard. Izzi had only just managed not to be thrown out. The next morning, instead of continuing with us, they headed off early back to Phuket to get their outboard fixed.

The Phang Nga marine national park is an area of 400 sq km to the north east of Phuket with a dramatic limestone karst scenery of over 40 islands with hongs, rocky outcrops, tunnels, sea caves, mangrove, crystal clear water and sandy beaches. ‘Hong’ means room or chamber in Thai and refers to the sinkholes and collapsed caves formed within the limestone landscape by rock erosion. There are secret gardens and lagoons accessible only through tunnels, sea caves or gaps in the high cliffs, where swifts nest. Our first stop was Ko Hong, the lagoon inaccessible by boat at low tide, so as the tide started to rise we joined the queue of longtail boats entering the hong. Avoiding the whirring blades of their long propellers, we paddled the dinghy in between the high cliffs into the open lagoon surrounded by sheer rocky cliffs. 

Continuing north a heavy rainstorm hit us. We managed to close the windows and hatches just in time as we were blasted by strong winds and almost horizontal rain, visibility dropping to only a few feet so we had to steer using the plotter, the nearby land obscured by the driving rain, until we could round the headland and anchor in relative shelter from the wind behind the island of Ko Roi, protected by high cliffs. The wind and rain gave way to a still evening, alone in the small bay. A hong here was accessible by snorkelling over to the island and swimming through a tunnel with a low rocky roof. Inside it was densely overgrown, quiet, mysterious and rather spooky. 

Our next stop was another island also called Ko Hong, busy with day tripper tourist boats, many carrying kayaks, and another hong with a low cave entrance through which to paddle and emerge into a massive lagoon. 

We had hoped to visit Ko Tapu aka ‘James Bond Island’ as in ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’, but it was much too windy to safely anchor there and leave Vega, or to dinghy over, so we had to turn around and pick up a mooring buoy that night back at Ko Hong, alone again apart from the floating ‘tourist centre’ boat.

Apparently it is very touristy there, with stalls set up on the beach selling souvenirs, so I’m hoping we didn’t miss much. 

This is how it looked when Roger Moore visited in 1974 (tap the triangle to watch):

We came back early the next morning to try again but disappointingly it was still too windy, with white horses on the sea and a few fishermen battling the waves in their longtail boats, hauling in their nets, so we reluctantly left again.

On our way south we stopped to anchor for lunch in the northeast corner of Ko Phanak, and once all the tourist boats and kayakers had left we pulled the dinghy up onto the beach and made our way on foot at low tide through the long, winding dark tunnel, glad we’d remembered the torch otherwise it would have been pitch blackness. Initially the tunnel opened into a high vault, but then narrowed and at  times we had to crouch down it was so low. It was a relief to eventually see the light at the end of the tunnel appear and we emerged into a massive open arena, high cliffs covered with brilliant green vegetation, open to the sky high above us, the tripod-like roots of the mangrove, still and quiet apart from the sounds of birds chattering, mud skippers exploring the wet, sandy floor which is flooded except at low tide. We wandered around in awe! 

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New Year’s Eve was spent at anchor in a bay on the west of the large island of Koh Yao Yai. A meal on the beach then we watched the fireworks at midnight on board Vega, exchanging Happy New Year messages with friends and family in the U.K. (still 7 hours to go for them). 

We needed to renew our Thai visas for another 30 days as we’d already been here for almost 60 days, so headed south to Chalong Bay in the south of Phuket. We anchored on the east side of the large bay and had the best, and cheapest, Thai meal we’d had yet, in ‘At the Beach’, a small restaurant right on the beach, sand between our toes. The following evening we met up for a meal ashore with Elaine and Roy on Paw Paw, and the next day Colin and Izzi picked us up from the end of the pier in Chalong and very kindly gave us a lift to the Immigration Centre in Phuket.

After the bank holiday weekend there was a long queue in Immigration to get our passports photocopied, another queue to get the right forms and to have them checked, following which we queued again in the crowded and ominously named Room 101, to have our applications approved, then a further wait until our passports were returned with a visa stamp… we were now ok until February 2^nd. Whether we’d be ok after spending an hour packed into an airless room with the mostly young, party-going tourists also extending their visas, we were dubious. Definitely a super-spreader event for Covid. 

And so back to the Boat Lagoon Marina the next morning for more work to be done on Vega.