An October Vacation

(I am way behind on blogs lately due to some technical difficulties, both device and operator related! Am working on getting caught up!)
Last year, in China, we celebrated the October Golden Week with a simple staycation daytrip nearby in Shanghai. Thailand does not celebrate the Golden Week but the kids had the second week of October off school. We decided to go someplace new and different and have some real fun. Phuket, an island on the south western side of Thailand, is a major vacation destination for those looking for sand and surf and a spoiling choice of resorts. It is also a beautiful destination for sailing.
Since leaving Sydney and his sailboat behind in 2001, Heinz has had little chance to scratch his sailing itch. This was the perfect opportunity to change all that. We left Chiang Mai on Sunday and flew down to Phuket, arriving mid-afternoon. After checking in with the charter company, getting a briefing and laying in some stores from the local grocery, we settled into the boat for the night with the hope of sailing out the following morning.

Breakfast on the boat

Melissa briefs us on our boat, the Fei Yu. (Interestingly the owner is an investor from Shanghai)

During his check of the boat, Heinz had noticed a problem with the halyard lines. Out came the bosun's chair and one lucky devil had to go all the way to the top to fix it!

That's a long way up!

Finally the boat was ready, but unfortunately the weather was not. The forecast was terrible so we ended up spending Monday and Tuesday waiting it out at the dock in the Marina. We managed to keep ourselves entertained. The boys practiced their knots.
We rode around in the dinghy,

 ate our meals on dry land (and someone else cooked and did the dishes!),
 

and Heinz read the charts and mapped out our course.

 

Finally better weather arrived and Wednesday we prepared to set sail. Ironically, after days with almost no sun, the bright sunshine made reading the equipment a challenge!

Finally we're ready to go!!!

It took us about an hour to motor out of the channel and into the main bay, where we were finally able to set sail.

 

Conrad gets a turn at the helm.

The sailing was fairly smooth and the scenery was stunning.
 

We sailed for about 2 hours to reach our first overnight mooring, a lovely little bay in a small grouping of islands in the northeast corner of Phang Nga Bay.

We dropped anchor (more on that later) and headed out in the dinghy to explore the little beach.

We passed a quiet evening, had dinner on board, and went to sleep. It was a beautiful, calm evening. Heinz said "While checking on the anchor around 3 a.m., I ended up staying on deck all night, the scenery was so beautiful, yet surreal!"

He saw numerous meteors each night, along with the "banana moon", as Vivienne called it. The sunrises were also amazing.

There is certainly no shortage of dramatic land and seascapes in every direction that you look. We had specifically chosen this group of islands as it was near Kao Ping Kan Island, also known as James Bond Island, from the movie The Man with the Golden Gun. After breakfast we piled back into the dinghy and headed in that direction.

It took about 15 minutes to get there. I haven't yet seen the movie, I must confess, but the approach to the island from the west was quite dramatic.

Rounding the north side, the famous pillar becomes visible.

We landed on this small beach on the south side and walked around a bit. Luckily it was still early enough that it wasn't yet swamped with other tour boats.

  This seems to be the more well-known view of the pillar.

I'm not sure if this dramatic rock formation, this large, tilted rock, figures into the movie but it was certainly interesting. It can be seen over the beach, where we landed, on the left side.
The island group is quite small so there isn't much else to see there. We only stayed about 20 minutes and headed back to the boat to set sail for our second destination: Koh Hong, a small group of islands about 30 minutes away. All of the land formations in the bay are limestone and many of the islands are peppered with small caves, "hongs", meaning "room",  in Thai. There are many tour groups that run charters for a day, bringing people out from Phuket or Krabi to see the interior caves and it seems some of the best or most famous are within the Koh Hong island group. We had passed this particular group the day before and had seen all of the charter boats surrounded by kayakers.

We weighed anchor and decided to take the dinghy in from the other side, through the lagoon. It was also full of charter boats and kayakers.

We headed for the hong, following instructions that it should be entered at high to mid tide.

We followed a few kayakers in. 

Turned out our dinghy was too wide. The kids were not very excited about it (ok: they were freaked out and did NOT want to keep going in) so we came back out and just paddled around the lagoon for a bit.

We did catch a glimpse of the sunlight further in, part of the interior "room" that apparently makes the trip worthwhile for everyone. We decided to head back to the ship and try the cave again first thing in the morning, when the tide was lower.

 The ship looked so calm and peaceful as we returned, but it was hiding our drama on the high seas, within.

Before we left the marina, Melissa had warned us that pirates had been hitting some of the boats mooring in the area, looking for cell phones, ipads, whatever they could find on board. When we first saw that our boat had been hit, we were quite smug: we had foiled the bad guys by taking with us everything that might have been of interest to them. But when you aren't a bad guy, and you don't think like a bad guy, you can't completely thwart their evil. All week I had been telling the kids to keep all of their books and crayons and toys in their backpacks and keep the backpacks zipped so things wouldn't be falling out and rolling all around the cabin. When they bad guys found nothing of any value out in the open, they simply grabbed all the bags and ran. We managed to keep everything that would have been of value to them, but they in turn got everything that was of real value to the kids. They were heartbroken when we realized their bags were gone. (Though thank goodness their special stuffed animals and blankets were NOT in the backpacks!) I felt so bad for them, and was left wondering how we would survive the last 3 days without all the puzzle books and story books to help entertain them in this tiny space! It takes a certain kind of rotten egg to steal a little girl's Barbie backpack, but in the end it is all just things. We were all safe, and that is what matters. So we put up our feet and relaxed for a bit.

First thing the next morning we headed back to check out the Hong. Turned out the reason for entering the caves at high tide is that the land that is exposed at low tide is deep, sticky mud, about 24 inches deep! Thankfully we saw some of the other kayakers wading through it before we stepped out of our own boat! Luckily there were some other small caves that we could paddle into and out of, but Vivienne still wasn't too keen on it all so we again did not stay long.

 
 
Reaching our next destination involved a bit of motoring to begin with.

 Vivienne was much happier with that.

We had a tiny spot of rain. The bay is quite deceptive: it is very wide but very shallow in places so we motored through the shallow bits, around to the far side of Koh Yao and then hit the deeper channel with some great wind and about 2 hours of exciting sailing.

 Conrad trims the sails and takes the helm like a pro.

Vivienne got tired and went down below for a nap. You can get a bit of a feel in this picture for how the boat was heeling and she slept right through it, not bothered by it at all! I think we have some real sailors on our hands! Eventually we reached our mooring point at the south end of the island and had a well deserved break with some watermelon.

 Before it got too dark, we headed to the nearby beach to play in the waves.

 
We had a few extra minutes of daylight so Conrad learned to drive the dinghy.
 
After a nice dinner of noodles and red curry, we settled down for a sleep.

That was the first night that there was any real swell where we moored, and it was the first time I felt the need to take any precautions: a bit of dramamine before going to sleep. The rolling of the ship can be quite nice but I didn't want to take any chances.
Saturday, our last day on the boat, greeted us with a beautiful surprise up on deck.
 
We pulled anchor for the last time, or shall I say "I" pulled anchor. We had discovered to our dismay at our first mooring that the anchor winch was not working so we had to drop and pull anchor by hand every day. Naturally since I do not know how to actually drive the boat, I got the dirty grunt work of actually pulling the damn thing up while Heinz steered whatever way to help reel it in and keep the lines from fouling the motor and the boat on a safe course. That should be my incentive to learn how to drive the boat already!

I looked at it as filling the role of the workouts I was missing while we were on board and tried to make the best of it. Eventually we were on our way back to the marina. We motored a bit and then again hit the deeper channels and some fine winds.

The captain enjoys the beautiful blue sky

The happy crew heading home

 All in all it was a really wonderful week. We were a bit worried at first with the bad weather keeping us in port for the first 2 days but we still had a great time, saw some amazing things and did some terrific sailing. (And turns out pulling anchor 4 times was just enough!) I was a bit worried about how we all would fare in such tight quarters for a whole week but we did just fine. Even with the lack of all the kids entertainment material for the last 2 days! No one got seasick, no one fell over board. We had a few dramas: Conrad cut his foot on a shell during one of our shore excursions, the dinghy ran out of gas coming back from James Bond Island and Heinz and I had to row the last 1000 or so meters, and the whole pirate thing and anchor issue. But we planned adequately and had just enough food and water for decent meals every day and a few fun snacks along the way. It was a big success and I think it is safe to say that this will be the first of many sailing trips to come. Afterall, we only explored about half of the bay this time. Wanna join us for our next outing?