Phuket Thailand I March 11 2009

Hello out there.Bringing you up to date on Phuket.Well, It's been an event filled month, but I'll try to keep this short.Right now we're at see on the way to the Similan Islands off the northwestcoast of Thailand. We're on our way back from Koh Phayam at the Burmeseborder where we had to take Charlotte, Rose's daughter, to do a "visa run"across the border to get another couple of weeks. She's been with us on andoff for about 3 weeks and Rose is in heaven.We spent the month of February at the Royal Phuket Marina (RPM) to get somework done, chill out and use our full month at the spa (massage or some suchevery day) as well as get some work done. I have to say the boat is in thebest shape in years. We have a new sail cover (the most expensive workdone) as well as a new "used" ice maker, repaired radar that now shows wesupposedly can get 72 mile range, and every possible courtesy flag we canuse for the next 2 years, all at really bargain prices. Also got someniggling electrical problems taken care of which have bothered us for years.We got Rose's mail delivered by a friend from Langkawi, but, alas, mine hasbeen lost. Of course it was the only really important package in yearsincluding 2 renewed credit cards of which we have desperate need!!!.Citibank got it right this time, though and FedExed a replacement in just 3days!!!The only downside of the marina was they (and apparently everyone else) donot have potable drinking water out of the tap. It looked and smelled okaybut why risk it. As a result we put in a dock water inlet on the boat whichbypasses the tanks and uses shore pressure to run the system. Drinkingwater in a 30 liter jug was 35 baht or $1 so it was just a minorinconvenience. Wish I'd done the dock water hookup years ago!!!. The otherproblem was getting in and out. There is another marina up the samechannel, but between the government cheaping out and apparent rivalrybetween the two marinas, the only was to get in is via an ultra shallow 15Kchannel. Seems everyone is too cheap to dredge out a direct route which isonly about 3K. Oh well we still loved it and they didn't charge the normalcatamaran 50% premium so out rate was quite good although about double thatof Malaysia.There were quite a few familiar faces between the 2 marinas, includingFreebird, Scorpido, Windbird, and others. Quite a bit of comings and goingsand regular dinners out at the excellent restaurants around the marina.Prices were great and our last night there, we went across the street to alocal place, a total of 11 of us. We ate until stuffed--really goodfood--and consumed mass quantities of beer for about $5 each!! Awesome! Wehad quite a few "gatherings, and a big Valentine's day party at one of therestaurants. Just try and find greeting cards in Phuket!!! There was alsoa Blues festival going on and the marina establishments kicked in and weeven had a free concert one night. Marina Navratilova was at the table nextto ours. Ah, lifestyles of the rich and famous!!!Rose and I spent ours days driving around checking the place out--the carwas $300 for the month!! Long overdue purchases were new sets of towels andnew tableware; they have a really good stainless operation here. New sheetswhen we get back. Oops, I knew things were going too well. The enginebilge alarm just went off--same one that flooded. There's another smallleak down there in the exhaust system. It's not serious but I'll have towait until we get in and the engine cools down to really check it out. Wepretty well circumnavigated the island by car and checked out every shoppingmall in the place--really nice ones, including a local "night" market. Thelocal markets aren't nearly as good as Penang so out collection ofsunglasses and replica watches has remained static!! It's amazing toimagine the tsunami coming in here as most stuff is built right up to thewater. One of the islands we just stopped at actually had a meter stickshowing the height of the water. Only about 1 meter but it would have sweptway inland as everything is so low lying!!! We also made regular use of theroadside "chicken man" who sold really good whole BBQ'ed chickens for 120baht--about $3.The captain also took a long overdue complete physical, as if anyone cares!!The International hospital here has a deal for about $250 that rivals all ofour old company physicals, including stress tests, EKG, a million bloodtests, chest X-ray and even a full abdominal ultrasound. In and out inabout 4 hours with results and they even have a nice nurse escort youaround. We didn't do Rose as she has had every test known to man over thelast couple of years. She, by the way, really got into the exercise thingand is "shaping up" quite nicely!!! I'm sure you'll all be excited to knowthat, in spite of my dissolute lifestyle, everything was in the acceptablerange, including cholesterol. My blood sugar is just a touch over normaland they suggested I check back in a couple of months. Could have somethingto do with the amount of candy I eat!!??We left the marina about a week ago and hooked up with our friends on ScotFree II to head up the west coast. They, as we do, need to get back toPhuket to pick up friends. Charlotte's friend, Lucy, will be joining usthis weekend. There's been no wind, but the scenery has been spectacular.The windlass (what you use to raise and lower the rather heavy anchor andchain crapped out. For a while jiggling the wires worked but a couple ofdays ago--nada. Turned out the fuse on the up button was a bit corroded andthe fuse holder needed replacing, but after trial and error we disconnectedsome unknown wire on the down and that works now too. Will have theelectricians work on it when we return as well as the freezer guy as theengine driven system, he thinks, needs a new expansion valve. All onlyminor irritations which will get sorted out next week. We sort of had to dothis recent trip up the coast now as the monsoon winds will be changingsoon, making that an unpleasant trip. After we pick up Lucy, the plan is todo the "inner" islands, including the James Bond, Man with the Golden Gun,island and the millions of resort areas in Phang Nga bay between themainland and Phuket.Okay, this is a shorty as we can only tell you about so much shopping, somany massages and so many cheap and outstanding meals. More later on ourtour of the inner islands.CheersTim & Rose

Malaysia IV Feb 11, 2009

Hello everybody.I promise this will get us pretty well caught up!!! Hah, Left you hangingwith our harrowing departure from Langkawi. Actually, the departure wasn'tharrowing at all, but about 5 miles out, off go the bilge alarms. Checkedthat starboard engine (even though we had been keeping a very close eye onit) and, sure enough, it's flood city--déjà vu all over again, as YogiBerra used to say. Only this time it's worse. We have no bilge pump andthe @#&*ing engine won't shut down. I'm pushing the electronic stop andnada, so water is just spewing forth all over everything down there andNorman yelled at me, seriously hurting my feelings!!! I had an enginemanual handy and found the emergency shut off. Whew! Whoops, that's notworking either. Water continues to fill the engine room and now there issmoke and that electrical fire smell. Probably wasn't a good idea reachinginto the salt water to find the emergency stop. Finally, as it is my boat,and I am a Captain, "I can help you", I remembered there is a fuel shutoffat the filter down there. That finally did it, but the smoke kept coming.We had to shut down the entire starboard side electrics to stop whatever itwas from smoking. Out came the emergency bilge pump and we had the waterunder control in a few minutes.Good thing we were headed for another haulout anyway, but we are notseriously going to damage our New Year's Eve celebration over the damnboat. So I got on the phone with Harris when we finally got in range and heworked with the marina to be ready for us. With one engine, it is almostimpossible to maneuver the boat, and the marina had serious tidal current,etc., so we needed help. Nope, no one can do that, but they can temporarilyput us on the inside of the outer breakwater which doesn't require anymaneuvering. Then, the thought is, we'll sort something out with a tow boator something to get us in a slip as the outer breakwater is only accessibleby water and has no power. Now the deal is, when you only have one engineand try to slow down or back up, that one engine moves only that half of theboat causing you to go in circles or back up sideways. We were doing okaycoming in to the breakwater but the genius "helpers" from the marina puttheir skiff right where I needed to go. Tried to back up, got into thecurrent, and we are now floating sideways down the channel. The only way toget under control is forward, but these guys just couldn't get it in theirheads to move the dinghy. Well, my voice carries and they probably heard,after I had asked politely a few times, "move that f'ing dinghy" all theway to Kuala Lumpur. The girls on board were not pleased; Normanunderstood. So to wrap this up, we finally got tied up, but only afterbanging up my newly repaired bow pretty bad. We decided to wait until thenext day to move to a slip as it was already about 5 or 6. Yes, folks, thatis cocktail time!!The next day, New Year's Eve, I think, the harbor guys dug up a boat,assuring us they knew what they were doing, and we put Norman in our dinghy.We did manage to get into the slip but only after the harbor master put a 3foot scrape on the starboard side. Oh well, I figure Pen Marine is payingfor all this anyway. To make this of manageable length, suffice it to saythat it was the starter motor that was smoking, so we had a fire drill toget a new one. (I thought I had a spare, but Yanmar must have changed theirspec as it wouldn't fit). Did that and cleaned everything up and rebuilt thealternator again, etc., etc., which was the plan anyway to do before I hauled.The "paint" specialist came down as well to see what could be done about thestains on the hull, and nothing worked. Ultimately, they 1500 gritsandpapered the entire hull--looks new now. The water leak in the holdingtanks are fixed now. Starboard was obviously caused by their failure toremove one of the stands when we relaunched, and port was a small pinholeand crack where the keel meets the hull. Both tanks are bone dry, and it'snow been 4 days. So everything got fixed, and the boat looks great.Unfortunately, it still cost me an extra three grand--some of the cost wasfuel and other stuff outside of the warranty that didn't get done lasttime. Oops, icemaker still not working. Now it makes ice and fills okay,but it doesn't automatically turn out the cubes. Oh, and the engine drivenfreezer isn't working either. That's okay. Phuket has all these services,and none of it is critical. Harris really went out of his way to get thisdone and done right, so I really can't complain too much. That's justboats!!!Okay, after that extremely abbreviated version of the boat work, we need to get back to oursocial life. That first night, we went to Little India which is right bythe marina. We were in Tanjung City marina which is in the center ofGeorgetown, the big city on Penang. Had a great meal for about $2 each,ridiculously cheap. That might have been the 29th--mad cow again, so Ithink I lost a day here somewhere. Anyway, New Year's Eve (NYE) I needed tobe on the boat to coordinate workmen and the other three took off exploring.I got a call about 4 pm to meet them at some touristy place.As it turned out later, this was very close to the Eastern and Oriental Hotel (E & O) which is an institution there and was started by the same guys who built Raffles,Singapore, so there are plenty of tony bars in the neighborhood. The crew was in an Espresso place drinking everything but and we decided, as it was about 6 by this time, to reconnoiter for a place for dinner. Norman and I hit an Irish pub while the girls explored something called the Red Garden Night market or something like that. They arrived back to report the place had a giant, very interesting looking food court. This is one of those where the tables are numbered and a million food stalls surround the central table area. You go order your food and give them the table number to which they deliver and you pay. So the giant beers were about $2.50 and they had Sake and wine as well, all of which I think I had. We really lucked out. The place was obviously very good as it was jammed, mainly with locals. The food was outstanding; the beer guys just kept bringing us cold ones, and they had a bunch of entertainment as well. Oh, and did I mention there were stores/stalls around, including a massage place. So not only was the food great, I was able to get a massage as well. Time flew. The old guys made it, not only to midnight, but well past and it was especially sweet as it was one of those unexpected good deals.The next day--we had had this brilliant idea later in the evening the night before--we headed off to the E & O Hotel for their famous Brunch. Norman bought which was great, because the drinks were a rip-off, but we were not disappointed!! While expensive for Malaysia, I think the New Year's Day price was about 80 ringgit or $25, it would have been $80 in the states. Unfortunately, the free wine and champagne were a rumor only, but that would have been too much to ask!! I'm writing this now so long after the fact, I can't remember what we did for the next couple of days, but there was the inevitable shopping by the girls, pubs for the boys and most meals out. R & N left on the 3rd and our livers are still recovering. As an aside, Norman has decided cats are alright after all, after spending 2 weeks with Charlie!!!The rest of our stay in Penang can be described in short order. The yard worked on the boat in the water for a few more days until the tides were right to re-haul. We got the engine running to get down to the yard and hauled on the ninth, I think. We got the car Harris was loaning us, dropped Charlie at the vet and checked back into the Krystal Suites which was having a promotion so our "room" (we got a 2 BR one this time) was even cheaper than before. The boat was out another 10 days, mainly because we had to wait for the tide again. We did every touristy thing there is to do in Penang and had some great food as our waistlines show. Shopped 'til we dropped at markets with Rose "I don't want a new watch" going crazy and buying about 6 or 8, all authentic designer fakes, of course. She also managed to pick up a few sunglasses. The captain managed to get a custom silk shirt made to replace his 15 year old one as well as a Patek Philippe and 2 Tag Heuers. These replicas are $10-30, some self winding and are "authentic" down to the name on the band and the backs. We are stylin' on Rendezvous now!!! We rode the tram to the top of Mount Penang; we visited the largest Buddhist temple in SE Asia, and it is huge; the fruit farm; we did everything!!So I did some pretty close supervision this time around and everything looked good, and, as it turned out, was pretty good. The hull looks brand new, the engines and all the pumps are working. Leaks are sealed and, so far, the holding tanks are dry. The replacement guts for the ice maker--this is important folks--were in and it was making ice, BUT, the thing was not turning out the cubes. It's off the boat right now being fixed in Phuket. Likewise, the guys acid-cleaned the engine driven freezer and did a great job--even found a piece of plastic bag in there (Joey, I'll bet it's left over from Sandy Strait when we sucked that bag up the engine intake), but I tested it and I don't think it's cooling. The icemaker guy is going to have a go at it when he brings the icemaker back. We were pretty nervous after all our past problems taking off for Langkawi, but left the day after our 11 pm launch and have had no problems since.The current was a bit against us heading up north so we stopped at the little bay on the south side from where we had departed 3 weeks earlier. The trip to Rebak the next day was only about 15 miles but it was really blowing until we "turned the corner". Quite a few unsuspecting boats were on their way out. We arrived on Chinese New Year's which is a huge deal in the heavily Chinese Malaysia--sort of like Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's all rolled into one. Businesses shut down for a week, sometimes two. Rebak had a really nice buffet dinner. The next day was Australia day, and the Aussies in the group threw a BYO party at the boat yard which was nice. Our purpose in coming to Langkawi was threefold. First, we needed to get some mail . Wouldn't you know, the only important mail I was getting this year--renewed credit cards--didn't show up. The USPS has washed their hands of it saying the Malaysians don't answer their emails, but I got Harris and the Penang PO involved to track it from this end. No luck yet, but we sent it Express mail and so have a tracking number. Damn. Second and most important reason for the return was to load up on cheap booze at the duty free shops. We know we'll be back as you can only stay in Thailand 3 months (forgot to mention we got our Thai visas in Penang) so our water line dropped only about 2 inches. When we leave for good every spare space will be filled as there has not been a cheaper place for booze we've ever seen and where we're ultimately headed, it is ridiculous. Third, we had to check out of Malaysia.So after three nights in Rebak we took off for Thailand, which is only about 5 miles away, but we were going to Phuket which is 120 miles out. We had to go to another harbour to check out and almost didn't get off as there was still vacation fallout from the New Year. As it was, we got out of Langkawi about noon for the 25 mile trip to the first stop in Thailand. They're very flexible about this run and don't make you check in to the country until Phuket as long as you get there in a week or so. There's tons of interesting places on the way, but we decided just to press on so, two days later, Jan. 30, (see I am catching up!!!) we arrived at the Royal Phuket Marina (RPM). It's sort of interesting getting in as there is a well marked but very shallow channel that weaves it's way in making a 4 km trip as the crow flies into a 15 km trip. Why not dredge a channel, you ask. Politics, I answer.So today is the 11th, and we are really loving this--better than our previous heaven of Lovina Beach on Bali. First, the climate is somewhat better as we're moving a bit farther away from the equator. Water's clearer too, although we haven't been back out. All the services you could ever want are here as are really, really, really good restaurants which are really, etc. cheap. Everyone has 2 for 1 happy hours for up to 4 hours and the drinks aren't too dear to start with. The Spa in the marina has a monthly deal. For 8,900 baht, you get unlimited massages, manicures, pedicures, wraps, facial--the whole nine yards---that's about US$250!!! Yahoo. We also got a car for $300/month and the marina waived the multihull premium of 50%. The only downside is there is no potable tap water in all of Thailand, so it screws up our water thing somewhat. We're using dock water for everything but drinking but there is no way to avoid "polluting" the tanks. A bit of bleach takes care of that, though. We're getting the finishing touches put on the boat here with refrigeration repair, some minor electrical work and a new sail cover which is disappointingly not so cheap. There are also a bunch of our American cruising compatriots here so the social life has been good. Everyone is toying with how to stay longer. We've pretty much made the decision to blow off the eastern Malaysia rally as Rose's daughter has bought her a ticket back to the UK, and the logistics would be off if we went east. But also because Phuket is so nice. Just imagine a cheap BVI where the people love you and want you there.So there. I'm up to date. We've done only a little exploring so far as our massage and workman schedules have interfered. More next time.CheersTim & Rose.