Thailand From Memory!

It is such a long time since we were in Thailand on the boat that in hindsight it would have been better if we had written this blog before we went travelling. So here is what we remember!

Once our parts arrived from the US and the AIS was installed we left for Thailand.  We did an overnight sail from Telaga to Ko Racha Yai and arrived in a lovely bay at around 10am. The water was so blue and clear. It was the first time we had been able to see the bottom in months. Our joy was spoilt after about half an hour when about 50 day tripper boats arrived. Suddenly we were surrounded by boats with constant wash. It was scary to watch as while people were in the water swimming, snorkelling and diving other boats would drive through the bay at about 30 knots. Our peace was restored again at about 4pm when all the boats left and we then had a swim.

We stayed a day to clean the bottom of the boat and recover before sailing a short distance to the southern end of Phuket to clear in. The bay where customs etc are located is also extremely busy which made the sea very rough. Getting the dinghy into the water and the engine on was a major achievement and involved Mike getting very wet! After clearing in and shopping we headed around the west side of Phulet  island.  We found a nice quiet bay with a small yacht club, probably one of the nicest bays we went to because it was quiet.

We hopped up the west coats to a number of different bays but none of them were very nice. There were wall to wall hotels and we became an obstacle for the jet skiers to drive around! The sea was not clear and the one time we went snorkelling a jet skier thought it was really good fun to spray water all over us and the dinghy. We visited Ao Patong beach and met up with friends Lindsay and Sharon on 'Songlines 3' and Pauline and John On 'Our Odyssey'. They are Australian so we went to an Aussie bar to celebrate Australia day with them

Next we headed to the Similan Islands which are about 50 miles offshore and are supposed to be good for diving. Our first stop was on one of the middle islands, it was very pretty with lovely clear water. Once we had moored we had a big shoal of fish around the boat eating the algae off the bottom which was good of them! We met a Canadian couple on another boat and agreed to go diving together. The dive was fairly mediocre but what was scary is that there are so many dive boats. We were towing our dinghy so were very visible from the surface but this did not stop a dive boat going straight over the top of us. It was horrible having huge propellors above our head when we were only 30ft down. If we had panicked and gone up at all we would have been sucked into the blades.

We did a couple of other dives but they were not very spectacular. We then visited the northern anchorage where you are allowed to walk ashore. Again it was nice in the morning but at about 10am the day tripper boats arrived. They all have at least 750HP motors and insist on doing about 30 knots to the beach! We estimated at least 50 arrive at the same time. They stay for the morning then move to our first anchorage while the ones from that anchorage move north. It makes sitting in the bays very uncomfortable with the constant wash. 

We moved back south ready to head back to Phuket. We though we had picked a quiet mooring but in the night the wind turned more northerly and it became very bouncy. Deciding we could not sleep we left at 1am into a fairly rough sea. We then spent 18 hours bashing to windward to get back to Phuket. It was very exhausting and for us the visit was not worth the sail.

Having given up on the west coast we headed into Phang Nga Bay on the east side of Phuket. The bay has some very pretty scenery with lots of limestone pinnacles (we think it is better than Halong Bay in Vietnam). There are Hongs which are collapsed caves which you get to through tunnels. One of the tunnels was quite long so that you cannot see the other end as you go into it.  Inside the hongs there are trees and a few monkeys. It was a relaxing few days in the bay. It is not a place to swim as the water is very shallow and muddy but it was lovely. We also brought some fresh prawns from the fishermen, our first fresh fish in months.

It was then time to clear out and head back to Malaysia. Having learnt  from our earlier experience we stopped at a quiet bay and dropped the dinghy before moving to clear out. On our way south we stopped at a few bays breaking the journey into day hops.  One of our stops was at Rok Nok, a nice bay except that we managed to run the boat into the reef and are currently having to repair the keel!

We spent 4 weeks sailing in Thailand, neither of us particularly enjoyed it and we have no desire to go back.

We had a visit from friends Kevin and Jill when we got back to Malaysia. They stayed at Rebak resort and we took them out for a few day sails around Langkawi. Once they left we had the boat lifted out of the water and prepared for our land travel.