Next step was shopping at Lotus, a big supermarket but not worth the journey, we’ll stick to the local ones. Then on down the road to a pharmacy where we were able to buy a good selection of antibiotics and other medicines for our medical kit.
Getting back to our travels over the last month, we made stops at Koh Kradon and Koh Lanta Yai before arriving at Chalong. Leaving the fishermen of ko kha yai we sailed up to Ko Kradon, about 40 miles, dropping anchor in the small bay on the west where we have stopped before. More boats here this time including a number of fishermen so we had to anchor further out of the bay. A very pleasant place so we stopped for an extra night before moving on to Koh Lanta Yai. We were aiming for the north of the island and sailing well. Meikyo was holding her own against a couple of catamarans coming up from Koh Mok. As the wind was picking up we furled the headsail and started to reef the main sail. The wind rose so fast that we made a snap decision and stowed the mainsail completely. Sailing on with just the staysail and just off the wind Meikyo was happily making 6-7 knots in 40+ knots of wind. The staysail is our real driving sail we cannot understand why so many people with cutter rig don’t make more use of their staysails.

On passage to Chalong.
We anchored further south than intended but this only added a small amount of miles next day on the crossing to Chalong.
Chalong is where we need to clear in to Thailand, and now having a larger outboard engine than we had when we were here on Serenity, we were able to anchor off the beach on the east side of the bay and use our dinghy for the 2 mile trip to the officials. A more pleasant anchorage than off the town.
After clearing in there were jobs to organise, repair of our dinghy and ordering new canvas chaps (covers to protect the dinghy from uv and wear) and arranging to collect the anchor chain we had ordered. There are a couple of chandleries here so we can stock up on spares and replacements, Malaysia struggles with this.

James, Vicky, Rocco and Rex on board Meikyo
New Year was fast approaching and we could probably have gone anywhere to see fireworks but we decided that Patong was well known for its firework display so that’s where we went. We again anchored to the north, the southern end of the bay nearer the town was crowded and noisy. As a display the fireworks were not impressive like Sydney but for sheer numbers and the hours that they went on for they were good. They started well before midnight spread along two miles of beach and town and when we went to bed they were still going off. The sky was lit up with Chinese lanterns which our friends on Jamala told us were about the size of dustbins. They were up until 2 am watching out for burning debris falling near their boat.
The furthest north we made was Bang Thao Bay before we had to head back round to Chalong for the dinghy work to be done. Leaving Bang Thao we just set the headsail for an easy sail down to Nai Harn, as we crossed Patong bay the wind was increasing and we rolled away the headsail and set the staysail. The wind picked up to 45 knots and stayed up for the rest of the passage. It must have been a land effect increasing the offshore wind as others we spoke to who were in slightly different areas experienced nothing as strong.
We are progressing through our to do job list ready for ocean passages. Actually we have two lists, must do and can wait a bit but when we leave here we need to know that we have all we need to complete the work.