Sunday, December 28, 2014

Passage northwards

Poor Sea Turtle had been either anchored or moored in Chalong Bay of Phuket Island since our arrival in Thailand August 1, 2014. We were definitely getting the urge to be out on the water again after all of our air and land travels lately.

We finally departed our anchorage on December 24th for an Andaman Sea island called Koh Phayam which is up the west coast of Thailand across from Myanmar (formerly Burma). We were in no rush so decided not to do "overnighters".

It was a great start. We sailed right off our anchor and all the way to a quiet night stop off a beach about 500 m south of Naithon Beach (N08°01.601' E098°16.606') where we had a peaceful night. (FYI - Koh or Ko in Thai means island.)

Our only problem: the fridge stopped working. We did not want to turn around and return to Phuket and continued with hopes of finding ice along the way.

We left bright and early December 25th sailing again until the winds died mid-morning and we reluctantly resorted to the purr of the motor. A couple of hours later, we stopped at a port town where the navy has a post and where we could buy some ice. We experienced some non-typical Thai hospitality when our first greeting was from a scowling longtail boater who made rude gestures as he decided we were in his path, even though we were there first.

Our next greeting was from a very rude "gentleman" in charge at a tourist excursion facility ashore instructing us to move our dinghy immediately from the dock area where we had tied even though we had been given permission to park there by a worker.

Jordan said we would only be 10 minutes as all we needed was some ice. He continued to be rude saying no and to move now. So Jordan left to move the dinghy while I waited. The man then yelled out to me saying to never park there again. I angrily told him that we would never be back so not to worry about it. He graciously replied "Good."

Wow, what an introduction to a new town on Christmas Day. We quickly walked into town, bought several bags of ice, and left immediately, bidding good riddance, and sailed north.

We anchored for the night along a shoreline at N08°43.200' E098°13.466'.

Our next day was uneventful as we motored with no wind and we anchored on the back side of Ko Ra in a slight drizzle as we watched several fishboats heading out for their nightly catch (N09°14.433' E098°18.795').

In the morning, we once again motored as no wind, arriving at our destination of Ko Phayam on December 27th (N09°45.598' E098°24.242'). It was exciting to see several other sailboats at the same anchorage, some that we knew. It had been a long time since we had that ideal cruising venue.

Another beautiful sunset

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