Good morning

 

I will soon be at a loss what to do. My jobs list is almost complete. You can see from the attached photos that we improvised a dingy workshop off the back of Rhiann Marie. The tender was hauled up backwards on the davits removing the excuse the engineer used for a couple of days - that the tides were not right to get the RIB up the beach to his workshop. So the Honda on the RIB got its long overdue service which was on my list though a long way down it.

 

In fact I have come so far ahead on my jobs list since arriving at Phuket I am now doing preventative work. I have had two of our three white sails down and sent off to the sailmakers for reinforcing, checking over and minor repairs done. The mainsail will be next.

 

Engine and generator servicing are up to date and in fact I am going to take off the heat exchangers and turbo charger etc to have them all checked through so that along with other jobs and as far as possible I can minimise the possibility of losing drive power in the critical coming months, from sails, engine or gearbox.  

 

Once, a long time ago in the middle of the Pacific somewhere some idiot (me) dropped the remote control for the davits over the side when trying to lower the 400kg RIB. This job I had learned to do by myself with the remote control, albeit supplemented by the use of teeth, one buttock, two hands, two feet and one elbow. However with the remote control now forming the genesis of a new motu out in the atolls I had to employ the services of my crew to help me raise and lower the RIB.

 

So,though again fairly far down the list of jobs, was to find a way of making the new remote control purchased at great expense a few months ago, speak to the davit controls. First the reciever for the remote control had to be located which took some time. Eventually with the guidance of Discovery we homed in on it. In our cabin under our bed. Of course, what an idiot, why did I not think of looking there?

 

Having located it I now needed someone to lift matresses, unscrew joinery work fit a head torch and curl and twist themselves into a position a contortionist would think twice about and Houdini would struggle to unravel himself from. Who could do that? Yes, my new first engineer designate. Trish! Funny that, any previous suggestion at her taking up that position in the aft cabin had always been dismissed, now all of a sudden it was clear that it was not a problem ... And so the davits were now, after much mind and body bending, reunited in harmony with remote control. Soon I will have to start creating a jobs list as the list is very small and soon to disappear and I will feel lonely without my constant companion of one and a half  years!  

 

Perhaps I shall have to lie down with the vertibrae fixed in one place and the mind wandering....

 

Regarding our onward circumnavigation. Nothing can happen till my core body strength is returned and the back is solid. At the beginning of March I will strat a daily program in the gym. If I have to wait here for three to six months then I will miss the weather window to cross the Bay of Bengal as by April the north east monsoon is starting to fade and May is a transition month before the south west monsoon sets in.

 

If I could recover in time and head west before the south west monsoons sets in, then I would be setting off with the intention of heading south from the Maldives through the Chagos, Mauritius, Reunion and Madagascar to Durban. This would leave me rounding the Cape of Good Hope / Cape Agulhas in the southern winter. This however is perfectly feasable with a boat of Rhiann Marie's capabilities and we just need to be careful with our weather forecasting.

 

A slight problem I have to work on though is that it would be preferrable in many ways to come down the West side of Madagascar, but pirate activity as we know from the Chandler's case extends down around the Seychelles almost to the north of Madagascar. There is no point me taking a southern route to avoid piracy if I then don't completely clear it. The planning continues as does the studying of my other options.

 

To give you an idea of the scale of the distances. To go right round the world at the equator is 21,600 nautical miles. We have already from the route we have taken sailed more than this distance. From here to back to the Mediterranean would be about 5,000 but possibly 6,000 miles if we took the direct route through the Gulf of Aden. From here to go west to the Maldives then south round Africa and return to say Gibraltar at the western end of the mediterranean would be about 13,000 nautical miles. No small deal.    

 

Anyway today we have my cousin Caroline and partner Glen aboard for a wee Thailand trip so we will head out and sail around the bay on the wobble board for a few days and see how it all goes.