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Date: 07 Feb 2012 15:18:24
Title: A Boater's Christmas - Nai Harn, Phuket, Thailand
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7:46.403N  98:17.781E

December 21, 2011 - December 29, 2011

Christmas away from home.  For me, the thought of it usually brings on a feeling of disorientation - as if the earth has suddenly tilted slightly off its axis; or perhaps on a smaller scale - as if the boat has started heeling madly while tied solidly to a marina dock.  Christmas away from home has only happened once before for me.  That was in 2007 - six months into our Season One.  We were in the Caribbean - Jolly Harbour, Antigua, to be exact.  It wasn't a bad place to be, but at the time, we hadn't yet developed boater friends so it was bit lonely.  There was a German boater couple there, who seemed just as isolated as we felt, so when Don wished them "Frohe Weihnachten" as we walked by on Christmas day, they seemed especially grateful.  Don has spent many a Christmas away from home, so the thought of one more doesn't really affect him in the same way it does me.  Besides, one Christmas away from the 37-member Bell family clan could be considered…..um….relaxing?  At least that's what I kept telling myself as Christmas 2011 approached us in Phuket.

Meanwhile, Sue (Storyteller) was busy making Christmas plans.  We would all meet by sea (or land in the case of Tom and Suzy on Priscilla, which was undergoing renovation in the Boat Lagoon boatyard) at Nai Harn, one of our favorite anchorages off Phuket's southwest coast.  Present would be John and Sue on Storyteller, Michael and Jackie on Lady Kay, Dave and Jan on Baraka, Claire and Fiona on Sa'Vahn, Tom and Suzie (Priscilla), and of course Don and I.  Festivities would start on Christmas Day at 11am onboard Storyteller with champagne and bloody Mary drinks.  Then all would proceed by dinghy to the Royal Phuket Yacht Club (it's not really a yacht club, but more an upmarket restaurant and hotel) for an elaborate Christmas lunch at 1pm.

The plan was sound.  It was the weather than wasn't.  We arrived in the Nai Harn anchorage on December 21st after a nice 35-ish mile motorsail in light winds from Yacht Haven marina.  A day or two later, the wind started to pick up.  So unusual!  We thought, "It won't last."  It did.  It blew a steady 20-25 knots with gusts as high as 35 for four or five days.  Including Christmas Day.  It was a northeast wind, which normally wouldn't pose a problem, unless of course you want to go ashore.  Hmmmm….how to get to dry land in a small dinghy, motoring slowly into 20 knot winds and choppy whitecaps, and land on a beach (there are no docks here) through the churned-up surf without getting completely soaked in your Christmas dress?  Never fear, Storyteller came to the rescue with a brilliant plan.  We would all make our way in our dinghies over to the rope marking the beach swimming area.  Once there, we would leave our dinghies tied to the line, and clamber into Storyteller's more hefty dinghy (3 or 4 passengers at a time).  John would then ferry us to shore, or as close to shore as he dared go with his big outboard motor in the two-to-three foot surf rolling onto the beach.  Then we would hope for the best, hop into the surf and waddle fast to shore.  After ferrying all of us, John would then make the ultimate boater's sacrifice: he would take his big dinghy back out, tie it to the swimming area boundary line, and swim in (the plan included a fresh water beach shower and a change of dry clothes for John upon arrival…assuming his dry clothes stayed that way).

This is really what's it's all about, isn't it?  Boating, I mean.  Taking the simplest tasks, and turning them (by necessity) into entire projects.  There are endless examples like the process of delivering a boater crowd to the beach on Christmas without causing any casualties.  Here's a second example: the simple task of doing laundry.  It should be simple since we have a washing machine onboard Harmonie (most don't have such luxury).  However, the washing machine is small, so what normally would be one load, turns into three.  Then there's the water use to worry about - Harmonie's washing machine uses about 50 liters of water per each mini-load.  This may not sound like much, but it takes one hour for the water maker to make 50 liters of water - so for every mini-load of wash, the water maker (and generator) must be run for an hour.  Then there is the drying.  The humidity is so high here, that even on a hot, sunny day, the wash is hung out on deck, then moved below to finish drying, preferably in an air-conditioned cabin (which requires use of the generator) to drive out the humidity and keep mildew at bay.  Four loads of wash can easily eat up half a day.  We find this is true of everything.  Need to do some provisioning ashore?  Half-day.  Engine work?  Half-day.  Bake some bread?  Half-day.  We split all our time into half-days, then wonder why and how the time slips by so fast.  But, and here's the thing, we don't find any of this annoying.  Everything takes so much more time and effort to complete that when it's done, we're left with a remarkable feeling of accomplishment.  That just doesn't happen at home when we throw a load of wash in and then dump it into the dryer without giving the water or power usage a thought.  This feeling of accomplishment is one of the big reasons why the boating lifestyle is so addicting - at least for us.  Where else but on a boat would you feel so good about doing a mini-load of wash?

Back to Christmas.
We all assembled on Storyteller at the appointed time on Christmas morning and toasted with a round of champagne and bloody Mary drinks while the wind blew.  Then we loaded into the dinghies wearing our Christmas best, and tried hard not to take waves over the dinghy bows on the way in.  Once tied off to the swimming area boundary line, John dutifully picked us up in Storyteller's big dinghy and ferried us in, stopping just short of the surf break.  The big, heavily-tattooed, unsmiling Russian tourists lying in loungers on the beach must have enjoyed the entertainment our shore party provided them that afternoon.  To keep our Christmas best from getting completely saltwater-soaked, we rolled everything up - crop pants, shorts, skirts and dresses.  Jackie, being the very no-nonsense English woman she is, decided modesty wasn't worth ruining a really nice dry-clean only skirt for.  So, off the skirt went.  The rest of us rolled everything up and tucked loose ends into our underwear, basically creating the same semi-naked effect.  This was all done in a state of complete hilarity (fueled by champagne) - the kind that causes jell-o legs and waves of giggles.  Graceful, we were not, but we did make it, mostly dry-ish, to the beach.  Oh, and John made it too, as did his dry clothes.

Our lunch was excellent - a five-course meal with seafood ("grilled to perfection" per the menu) as the main course.  There was a turkey option, but who eats turkey in Thailand?  We were seated in a nice, airy pavilion.  Airy enough that an errant wind gust occasionally knocked a mostly empty wine glass over, which gave us our first clue that the wind was increasing out there.  When finished, we straggled back to the beach in good cheer and John swam out (again, the sacrifice!) to retrieve Storyteller's dinghy.  The surf was frothing more than it was when we arrived, but we were that much more relaxed, and less concerned about the inevitable drenching.  Jackie's skirt came off again, and everyone else's got rolled up and stuffed into underwear.  John waited with the dinghy just beyond the breaking waves, and we waded out in full view of the lounging Russians.   We tried to hop over the first wave, were unsuccessful, and pretty much gave it up after that.  By the time we got to John and the waiting dinghy, we were waist deep and completely bedraggled (so much for the very rarely applied full complement of make-up and hairspray!).  Getting in the dinghy proved a challenge as full-tilt laughing fits set in.  How do you load your laughing self into a big dinghy when standing waist deep in moving water with your Christmas dress hiked up into your underwear?  Simple - you launch yourself, stomach first, up onto dinghy side, and wait for someone to either push you in from behind, or drag you in sack-of-potatoes style from above.  In the end, you semi-flop into the dinghy - really more like a dead fish than a sack of potatoes.  Don, Claire, Fiona and I went in the first dinghy-ferry load, which allowed us to watch the rest of the dinghy loading debacle from the safety of Harmonie's dinghy.  We were too wet to get the camera out, so none of this was documented (unless of course the unsmiling Russians took videos).  Too bad, because some of the dinghy entries went way beyond sack-of-potatoes/fish flopping style, looking instead more like a series of comedic sea rescues.

Most of us landed safely back on Storyteller for an afternoon tea or scotch.  We landed there again the next day for Boxing Day lunch.  Now here's a good reason to spend Christmas away from home: Boxing Day.  It's like having an extra New Year's Day - all that's required is the ability to eat, sit, and do nothing.  Excellent.


Below are pictures from our Christmas week spent anchored in Nai Harn:

Don giving outboard motor maintenance and repair instruction to Claire and Fiona.  We met Claire and Fiona on their boat Sa'Vahn in New Caledonia in 2008.  We saw them again in Darwin July of 2010, and spent some time cruising some parts of Indonesia together.  Last year, they left Sa'Vahn on the hard at Rebak Marina, and went home to London to work.  Over Christmas, they came out for a three-week holiday, and spent a marvelous Christmas week with all of us at Nai Harn before racing back to Rebak to store Sa'Vahn for another nine months.

The maintenance and repair instruction went extremely well.  Unfortunately, after several hours (nearly a half-day) of effort, the thing still wouldn't run.  Yes, most boat-living challenges are fun and come to some sort of satisfying end, however, outboard motor repair might be an exception.


We didn't do any Christmas decorating, but others did - which is a better deal because you can't see the decorations on your own boat when you're at anchor anyway, but your view of your neighbors' decorations is perfect.  This is Sa'Vahn at the height of her decked-out Christmas glory.  (Most of the flags came down the next day when the wind velocity increased and Claire and Fiona risked the onset of deafness caused by excessive flag flutter.)


Michael and Jackie in her very dry, dry-clean only Christmas skirt.  This was our view of Nai Harn from the Christmas lunch venue.  The sea and surf look serene from here, but looks can be deceiving.  


The boys in their Christmas best.  Starting from left:  Dave (Baraka), Tom (Priscilla), and Don (not sure what happened to his Christmas shoes?).


Our boater Christmas table.  Starting from the left and going clockwise:  Claire (Sa'Vahn); Dave - blocked out, sorry! (Baraka); Michael (Lady Kay); Sue - also blocked out, oops! (Storyteller); at the end of the table is a friend of a friend of Sue and John's, who joined us for lunch and whose name escapes me; Jan (Baraka) sitting behind Jackie; Jackie (Lady Kay) standing up; John (Storyteller); Suzy (Priscilla); Tom (Priscilla); Don; and Fiona (Sa'Vahn).


Suzie (Priscilla) extolling the virtues of her new iPad to John (Storyteller).


Fiona and Claire (Sa'Vahn) drying out on Storyteller Christmas afternoon.


Don and I doing the same (with Sue in the background).

We hope all of you had a merry (and less wet) Christmas.  Ours turned out to be very, very nice; and well……um…..relaxing.
Anne







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