7.58N 98.23E

Thursday 24/11/2012

Unlike Bernard Montgomery I do not often question the wisdom of the Almighty, however perhaps I shall for once.

It seems very sensible to take water vapour from the sea and take it to meadows and fields to permit the growth of foliage; cattle, sheep and chickens can then eat this and subsequently allow us to kill them and then eat them ourselves. What seems strange is that He should go to all the trouble of making all that fresh water and then move it a couple of hundred miles and chuck it back into the salt-water sea whence it came. This has happened for the last 12hrs and even our new and excellent canvas has wilted under this aqueous assault and dripped on me.

My last list of breakages failed to include:

bow thrusters,

hob lighters,

smoke alarm, and now to be added,

my Kindle.

We have however recovered our berth in Phuket and replaced the air conditioning unit with a new one (only £250). Progress I suppose.

Tree huggers are endlessly bleating on about whales, badgers, newts and God knows what else, but they entirely ignore the barbaric practice of Halal butchery which is banned by the EU (I’m not sure this isn’t a plus point). Apparently it takes 30mins for an unanaesthetised cow to die after its throat has been cut (as it does for fish once landed on a trawler). The animal activists are obviously unwilling to confront Islam lest the Muslims be ‘offended’.

Anyway we are safely tucked up in Boat Lagoon Marina, Phuket and we are organising lots of really useful chaps to reduce the list of breakages.

Tom & Jos (Mailasail blog Pelekan) seem to having as much fun with their generator as we did two years ago (2 years, 6 different engineers and about £2000 only eventually to solve it ourselves!)

K

Eeyore is Cheerful as ever! I obviously need to find a “really useful present”. At least now we are in Thailand it should be less scarfy.

The new aircon unit is smaller and more powerful than the old one and a couple of nice lads delivered it and removed the other. It probably needs a new motor so o.k. for them. The wine in Langkawi is about 1/3 the price in Malaysia or Thailand so worth stocking up and I persuaded a chap in the local wine shop to deliver. He asked for £1 but we gave him more.

The trip from Langkawi was a bit grim with huge quantities of rain which made visibility almost nil. About 2a.m. I added 5 miles to our trip to avoid a fishing fleet strung out between 2 islands. Huge relief to be heading away from all the lights even if in the wrong direction.

Anyway we are now safely in Phuket and heading to immigration tomorrow. I hope they will not be too upset we landed without going there first. I will play the walking stick card.

C