New Year New Crew

Wildfox
Anthony Swanston
Fri 1 Feb 2019 06:40


I check in at Chalong after a four day passage to Phuket; all routine.  I visit the Big Buddha for the first time.  He overlooks the bay and I get my berth back in Boat Lagoon 10 miles north.  Where nothing has changed.  I decide to join the tail end of a rally which began in Langkawi and take on a crew for the duration of that – about three weeks.


But first I head off to Bangkok to apply for my visa for the Andaman Islands. Suddenly they have started issuing them.  The paperwork is difficult and those who have gone before me have had great fun.  Not!  So I allow a day and a half for the process. I arrive at the agency at 0825, it opens on the stroke of 0830, my paperwork is checked and I am walking out again at 0855!  No guarantee that I will get the visa but the first hurdle is over. So I now have to kill a day and a half in one of the most air polluted cities in Asia. 


Cat, my new English crew is tall at almost six feet, but fits perfectly in the roomy Wild Fox. After a few days we provision and head out around the islands and the hongs.  It is high, high season here and avoiding the crowds is the name of the game. Cat cooks well, works well, knows little about boats but learns well.  She wins the pancake competition – lovely pancakes with lemon, mango, maple syrup, cinnamon apples, ripe banana and strawberry jam.  Five days later we are still speaking to each other and we get into the unfinished marina at Port Takola  for our first rally dinner.  We have just been told that the marina owner is bringing along two baby elephants.  We both hope that they are orphans and have not been taken from the wild…


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