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Date: 05 Feb 2012 06:53:28
Title: Marina Sitting - Yacht Haven Marina, Phuket, Thailand
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8:10.207N  98:20.502E

November 23, 2011 - December 20, 2011

Oh no!  Another three week blog writing lapse!  I know, I know, this season's blog writing service has been downright lousy.  There's no excuse for it.  Henceforth this season, there will be no more long lapses.  I write this with complete confidence because we will be leaving on our first long Indian Ocean passage in less than two weeks, and between now and then, the blog has to be completely caught up so daily updates can be posted while we sail.  Thereafter, we'll be moving quite fast all the way to South Africa in July, so the blog will have to do the same.

Where are we at the moment?
Back in Rebak Marina, Langkawi, Malaysia - our home away from home - having just arrived after four daysails from Phuket, Thailand.  We've now done the Langkawi - Phuket route four times over the past twelve months.  If we used paper charts, our track lines would certainly have worn through the paper by now - a sure sign it's time to move on.

Ok, so, back to the topic at hand - the month of December and...
Marina sitting.  Not our favorite pastime.  It doesn't matter where we are - Baltimore, Fiji, Vanuatu, New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Thailand - or how nice the marina is; for us the initial glamourous marina ambiance takes only a few weeks to morph into the stifling-trailer-park-get-me-out-of-here feeling.  To make matters worse, the massively hot and humid conditions, which are intensified in sheltered, airless marinas, force us to live like cavemen.  We draw the curtains, erect the circus tent, close up the boat and put on the air conditioning - effectively shutting out all the heat-generating sunlight, and turning Harmonie's cabin into a cave.  Geez, if we wanted to live in the dark with no sun, we could have stayed in upstate NY for the winter.  At home at least our neighbors are more than eighteen inches away from our front door!  Ah, so, woe is us for having to marina sit for the month of December while we waited for our sails to be repaired and a new sail made.  At least here in the land of endless hot sun, all we had to do was stick our heads out from under the circus tent for a minute or two to get our daily vitamin D fix.

Marina sitting might imply that Don and I were stagnant for the month of December.  Not so!  While it's true that Harmonie didn't move, we did our best to take advantage of the land access convenience Yacht Haven Marina offers.  As much as we like to complain about marina living, you can't beat the access to boat services and ease of provisioning.  This is true in Phuket, as long as you don't mind dodging motorcycle mounted food-cart contraptions, wrong-way-driving mopeds, no-warning-given-lane-changers, and interesting road signage that warns of many things (in Elvish), but never seems to point out the highway lane you're driving in abruptly ends.  The mall parking garage is another adventure.  Since we happened to be there during the Christmas shopping frenzy (this would be a good time to point out the majority of Phuket's population is Buddhist), parking places were in high demand.  No worries - the people of Phuket employ an interesting parking system.  If all spaces are full, cars are simply double parked in the aisle and left in neutral.  This way, when the owners of the blocked-in cars want to leave, all they have to do is roll the double parked cars out of the way.  Brilliant!  To make it even more fun, the mall parking garage is typically crawling with parking police.  Don't take this to mean they are there to hassle shoppers.  Oh no, they are there to help.  Each is equipped with a very shrill whistle, which they employ with wild abandon.  First, they direct you to an open parking space (via hand signals and lots of whistling), then they indicate the proper entry method - backing in.  Ok, not usually a problem, but Thai parking spaces are like Thai people - they are small.  They are parking space-lite: meaning, 1/3 less space.  Combine this with the cars double parked in the aisle on either side of the designated skinny space, and more skill is needed to back a rental car in than was needed to Med moor Harmonie to Ambon's concrete fishing boat port wall in the midst of heaving swell.  Well, almost.  Again, no worries!  The parking policeman provides direction via a range of whistle tweets.  Short blasts mean keep on backing.  One long, rather frantic blast means stop!  He also motions with his hands to indicate which way the wheel should be turned.  Once in, you might have trouble opening your door wide enough to get out, but that's usually when we remind ourselves our life away from home is one continuous (if not sometimes uncomfortable) adventure.
  
The wisdom of Khun Sue.
We spent much of December running errands.  First came haircuts.  Khun Sue (Khun is a title of respect like Mr. or Miss) is our hairdresser of choice.  She has a tiny shop just outside the entrance to another Phuket marina, Boat Lagoon.  All the boaters we know go to Khun Sue.  She does a good job on our hair, but we like her best for the tidbits of Khun Sue  wisdom she occasionally bestows on us.  For example, one day we were talking with her about getting older and the precautions one should take to stay healthy.  Khun Sue said calcium was very important because many Thai people become stooped with age.  She went on to explain in her unique form of English, "I worry more than other Thai woman because I have big breast for Thai!  I get old and will bend over more because my big breast!  I take calcium so I don't bend over too far."  The logic is there, but how can you not laugh?  Khun Sue is still a small person, but it is true that she has larger breasts than most Thai women.  This potential aging problem obviously weighs heavy on her mind.  

We weren't there at the time, but Sue (Storyteller) filled us in on another choice piece of Khun Sue wisdom.  The topic was romance.  Khun Sue said something like, "I divorced now.  If I get new man, and he say he want to move into my house, I say, 'No! You want live with me?  We get new house and each pay half!  Each pay half!'.  No man will take my house!".  Khun Sue is definitely what we would call one smart cookie.  We'll miss her bits of wisdom.  Luckily Sue and John (Storyteller) and Michael and Jackie (Lady Kay) plan to hang around Phuket for a while, so we'll be kept up to date on Khun Sue-isms at least for a while.

Next?  Sails.
With a 5,000 mile ocean crossing ahead of us, we decided it was time to have the sails repaired, and a new, smaller, head sail made.  The day after our Yacht Haven arrival, we drove down to Rolly Tasker.  The banner on the wall opposite the entrance claims Rolly Tasker is the largest custom built sail loft in the world.  It's big.  Big enough to lay at least five super yacht sails on the floor without them touching.  More than big enough to deal with repairs on our set of four sails (main, genoa, mizzen, ballooner - we also have a mizzen staysail, but we rarely use it).  Arrangements were made for a new, smaller head sail to be designed, and for our current sails to be picked up from Yacht Haven for repair.

A few days later, we went back to Rolly Tasker to look over our four sails and come to some agreement on the repairs to be made.  Each sail was laid out and reviewed by Don and I, John and a few Rolly Tasker employees.  We were heartened when they told us the worn and tearing panel on the main's back edge could be replaced.  Huge news for us as it would save us having to buy a new main sail (at a cost of around $2,500).  We were told the repairs and the new sail would all be done in time for Christmas.  We left happy.  Several days later we received the design for the new head sail, and after Don reviewed the drawing with John, one small change was requested.  Essentially, the new head sail is significantly smaller than our current genoa.  For you sailing geeks, the new head sail is a yankee cut 110%, versus our giant genoa, which is 150%.  The reason we decided to add this sail to our collection is because crossing the Indian Ocean will not be an exercise in downwind sailing like crossing the Pacific was.  We expect to have winds forward of the beam for at least two of the passages:  Chagos 1200 miles southwest to Mauritius, and Reunion 1500 miles southwest to Richard's Bay, South Africa.  It's true that we can furl our genoa to make it smaller, but in strong headwinds, a half-furled sail will get pretty beat up (the half that's used will stretch), and a half-furled sail does not lend itself well to pointing into the wind.  We shouldn't have to furl the smaller sail (except in extreme conditions), and it will allow us to point into the wind much more efficiently.  The downside is we now have to store a big, heavy sail in our 'garage' (lazarette), but, after that first, extended, forward of the beam sail in heavy wind, I think we'll feel the extra sail storage is trivial. 

So, how did it all turn out?  Good and bad.  First the good news.  Everything was done before Christmas, as promised.  Also, the new sail looks good, fits well and from what we could tell during the 35 mile motorsail in light winds from Yacht Haven Marina to Nai Harn anchorage on the southwest coast of Phuket, performs nicely.  We'll know better when we dig it out again somewhere in the South Indian Ocean.  Now the bad news.  Out of the four sails sent in for repair, only one was repaired correctly (the ballooner, which required minimal attention).  The back edge panel on the main was not replaced as discussed.  Instead, the affected area was covered over with a large patch.  Also, changes to the main sail's head were not completed.  The genoa's clew was not reinforced, and there were other miscellaneous items on the genoa and mizzen that also weren't attended to as agreed.  In the end, rather than bicker back and forth, Don reinforced the clew on the genoa himself and we decided to live with the rest of what they had done (and not done).  The only good thing we can say about the sail repairs is that we didn't pay very much for them.

Oh, and one other piece of good news, we did have Rolly Tasker make us a new leather cover for our wheel, and are very happy with the result.  It's now quite spiffy.

More boat stuff.
The list goes on.  You would think after the month we spent in Rebak Marina when we first returned to Malaysia earlier this season, all the boat stuff would be done.  Not.  Certainly not with such a big season ahead of us.  Don filled up December's marina sitting with the completion of a whole new list of boat jobs:
  • Replaced the hand pump on the forward head.  For those of you that might visit us in the future, this is a very important improvement.  The new Jabsco toilet pump incorporates a feature that stops back flow into the bowl.  Ahhhh….very important indeed.

  • Varnishing.  One of Don's least favorite jobs.  When the varnish suddenly appears, it's clear that the end of the to-do list is near.  Don re-varnished the companionway stairs, and my, how they shine!  He also installed non-skid strips on each step so we won't inadvertently slide down the stairs when sailing at an uncomfortable angle in ugly seas.

  • Teak touch-up.  "What teak?", those of you familiar with Amel boats might wonder.  There's not much (which is a good thing since teak touch up also permanently resides on the bottom of our to-do list), but what there is (the companionway door and frame, and a bit on the 'dashboard') is now pretty.

  • Sewing.  Aha -- another bottom-of-the-list dweller.  The sewing machine came out of its hiding place (under the salon settee), and Don whipped up canvas covers for the windlass, grill, and covers for the main's furler and outhaul motors.  He also repaired the canvas hatch 'hats' we constantly use in this environment to keep the burning sun from blasting through the hatches and turning our cabin into a furnace.  We farmed out the repair of our cockpit sun cover to a local canvas shop, and it came back to us in good order.  All in all, our canvas is very satisfied with itself.

  • Safety stuff.  We installed a new oven in Australia, and aside from the three day sail from Darwin to Banda, Indonesia, we haven't done any long ocean passages since that time.  Therefore, the stove's ability to gimbal properly when cooking in rough seas hasn't really been tested.  Rather than leave it to chance, Don decided to replace the stove crash bar with a wider (taller) aluminum strip, and add weights to the oven bottom.  The crash bar keeps pans from sliding off the stove and onto the cook, and provides a place for fiddles to attach.  Fiddles hold pans in place over the burners - again, keeping them from sliding onto the cook.  Weights added to the bottom of the oven should help the oven gimbal more effectively.  Gimbal, for you non-sailors, means to swing freely on an axis.  An oven that gimbals is essential on a sailboat given a sailboat's tendency to tilt, bounce, slam, heel, pitch, roll, etc.

There was fun to be had too.
This is especially true when boater friends like Michael and Jackie on Lady Kay and Sue and John on Storyteller are there to entertain us.  Of course they had lots of other things to do in the month of December, but managed to keep us amused at the same time.  Starting with Thanksgiving.  They all joined us for Thanksgiving dinner shortly after our arrival in the marina.  An added bonus was the attendance of Annette and Tony - friends of John and Sue's from New Zealand (we stayed in their 'bach' on the South Island in 2009, and they visited us at home last summer in Syracuse).  Of course the six of them didn't realize it was Thanksgiving, so a Thai dinner cooked by Khun Pehn in her tiny restaurant called 'Coconut' didn't seem odd.  It only seemed slightly odd to us after eating pizza for Thanksgiving last year in Malaysia.    Coconut sits on the northern Phuket coast a short walk from the marina, and is basically a one-woman show.  From what we can tell, Khun Pehn does the shopping, the cleaning and the cooking, with some serving help from friends and family.  There are a few tables with mismatched chairs and plastic Chiang Beer tablecloths - all outside (as everything tends to be in the lovely tropics) with partial cover if it happens to rain.  Pehn's kitchen consists of a little countertop for chopping, a hefty propane burner and a giant wok.  We spent a total of six weeks in Yacht Haven Marina (four weeks waiting for our sails in December and another two weeks when we traveled to Laos in January), and had many a meal at Coconut.  Thanksgiving was our first meal there, and was very appropriate since everything was served family style around a big table without us having to order.  Generally, boaters from the marina straggle in to Coconut, and Khun Pehn feeds them.  This approach to dining out is one of our favorites.  Enter a restaurant, sit down, and when the owner/manager/cook approaches, simply, say, "Feed me!".  Like magic, the dishes appear and if thirst is a problem, the help-yourself beer fridge is three steps away.  For Thanksgiving we had fish grilled and seasoned two particularly tasty ways (and when I say fish, I mean the whole fish staring up from the platter looking slightly perplexed), masaman curry (a Thai curry with Indian influence),  pad thai (stir-fry noodles with vegetables and egg), stir-fry vegetables, shrimp cakes (like crab cakes), steamed rice, and probably a few other things I can't recall.  All sprinkled with fish sauce, oyster sauce, palm sugar, lime, cilantro, and bits of red-hot chili pepper, of course.  How's that for a Thai Thanksgiving feast to remember? 

After Thanksgiving, the six of us decided a land trip to Myanmar (Burma) might be in order, so there was much scurrying around gathering research and making plans.  Unfortunately, Myanmar tourism is booming at the moment, and everything was booked out.  I should say booming is a very relative term.  When compared to eight or ten years ago when there was essentially no tourism in Myanmar, the bit that happens now fills up tourism infrastructure fairly quickly.  Instead, we decided to take a land trip to Laos with Jackie and Michael in January (we did, it was fabulous, and will be the subject of future blog entries).  Sue and John are in Myanmar as I type this, so hopefully all is going well since there is very little opportunity for international communication from within that country.

During our marina sitting month, there was, of course, at least one visit to a famous Phuket resort for Sunday brunch.  This was a re-run of the same brunch we attended last year when we were in Phuket.  It was still as good, and afterwards, turned us into couch potatoes back on the boat where we watched all four hours of Dr. Zhivago while brunch was digested.  This couch potato thing doesn't happen often on the boat, but when it does, we do it well.

Sunday brunch at Phuket's marvelous Indigo Pearl resort.  That's Jackie with her eyes closed (sorry!), Michael next to her, Tony and Annette (who is hidden), Don, John and Sue.


Aha - there's Annette!  We first met Tony when he was crewing on the old Storyteller in Panama.  Then we met Annette later that same year (2008) when she came out to stay on Storyteller in Fiji.


And there was more fun.
We took a break from marina sitting for a long weekend in early December and had a nice sail on Lady Kay (while Harmonie waited patiently and sail-less in Yacht Haven) from the marina to Ao Chalong, a bay on the southern coast of Phuket.  Once there, we moved onto Storyteller, where we spent the next several days watching the King's Cup yacht races on Phuket's west coast.


With all the yacht racing going on around us, John decided it was time to launch Tipsy, Storyteller's sailing dinghy.  John's body language doesn't necessarily exude confidence in Don's dinghy sailing ability, does it?


Lady Kay was caught up in the dinghy-class race as the sailors maneuvered around her.


Sorry for the lack of pictures of the big race boats - those that I did take didn't turn out well.  The boats were fantastic and came from all over Asia including China, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and elsewhere.  The long weekend watching yacht racing with Storyteller and Lady Kay was an excellent break from the drudgery of marina sitting.  The night of our return to the marina, however, was a bit unsettling.


We were having dinner on Storyteller at anchor just outside Yacht Haven Marina when John noticed flames in the distance.  After a closer look with the binoculars, it was clear that a boat was on fire in the marina.  Our hearts momentarily stopped as visions of Harmonie in flames flashed through our heads.  Don and John immediately hopped in Storyteller's dinghy to investigate.  There were about fifteen very anxious minutes while Sue and I watched the fireball grow from our vantage point on Storyteller's upper deck, not knowing what boat it was or where it was positioned in the marina.  We could tell the fire was only getting worse and could see that the boat's entire upper structure was a mass of flames.  Don and John then arrived back in the dinghy with a full report.  It was a 60 ft. Nordhavn trawler owned by an American couple from the west coast.  They were home in the US at the time, so no one was aboard.  The trawler was in a slip near many other boats (which would have included Storyteller, if Storyteller had been in her slip and not at anchor at the time), so the first responders (and there were many - marina workers as well as other boaters) knew the best and only thing to do was to tow the burning boat out of the marina and away from the other boats.  When Don and John approached the scene in the dinghy, they said the fire was so intensely hot they didn't dare get any closer than a few hundred feet.  They watched while some fabulously brave people in dinghies pushed and towed the burning mass out of its slip, and toward the marina exit.  At one point the current (which runs rapidly through the marina at mid-tide, but was thankfully running much slower at the time) caused the burning boat to float into another large trawler, which briefly caught fire before the rescuers could get the burning bulk going in the right direction toward the marina exit.  At least one of the super yacht crews were operating the fire hose their giant motor yacht (125-150ft) is equipped with, to prevent the flames from coming their way as the blazing boat was towed by.  The four of us watched, speechless, (I think the only words I could come up with were 'Oh my God!')  as the towing dinghy maneuvered the burning boat out of the marina, through the anchorage (which is when this picture was taken, although you can't see the towing dinghy), and grounded it on a sand bank a fair distance away.  There it stayed and burned to nothing throughout the night and following day.

Well.  That was sobering.  Needless to say, the rest of our dinner that night aboard Storyteller was mighty quiet.  Amazingly, no one was hurt, and aside from the luckily non-structural damage the other trawler sustained when the burning boat floated into it, no damage was done to any other boats or the marina docks.  A huge credit to the rescuers for sure.  Since then, we've heard that the Nordhavn owners returned to Phuket from Seattle to review the damage (what a horrendous shock that must have been) and arrange for the ~$1 million wreck to be cleared from the channel.  We also heard that the cause of the fire is unknown - not a surprise since there was nothing left of the boat for investigators to look at.  There was some good news though: apparently the owner's insurance company was cooperating nicely. 

We rounded out our month of marina sitting with research and planning for our upcoming Indian Ocean crossing.  Not the least of which was obtaining a permit from the British government to visit the uninhabited islands of Chagos for the month of April.  Several forms and a wire transfer (200 pounds) later, and at least our application was filed (it took a month before we received the permit, but there was no additional hassle).  We also contacted Bruce, the same, trusty weatherman who guided us through our second loop of the South Pacific (New Zealand, Tonga, Fiji, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Australia in 2009), to do the weather for our Indian Ocean crossing.  He agreed immediately - with one caveat.  It seems he will be doing the weather for the Australian (he is based in Perth, Australia) Olympic sailing team in England this summer, so he might not be available to help us with the last (and most difficult) leg of our trip (Reunion to South Africa) in July.  Well!  If Bruce can do the weather for the Australian Olympic sailing team, we are pretty sure he can handle our, paltry by comparison, weather needs.  And we have no worries - if Bruce isn't available for that last leg to South Africa, he'll recommend one of his weather buddies to fill in for him, which should do nicely.

Next up:  A boater's Christmas.
Anne
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