Advertisement
Published: January 13th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Today is the day we’ve been waiting for - BOAT DAY - yayyyyyyyy !!! I’ve made plans to meet Diane (skipper) at 830am at breakfast to pass over our passports so she can walk them through immigration. Thank God I’ve sailed with her before or I’d have been really reluctant to give this strange woman our passports and let her run away!!!
10:30am and we’re cabbing it to the boat. You can feel everyone’s attitude shift. We are all in a great mood and the anticipation is so thick you can slice it!!! We arrive at the marina where our cabbie must drive around for at least 20 minutes to find the right dock… sailboats in sight everywhere - but which one is ours… this is torture!!
“E” Dock!!! - We see it - two minutes and we’re all out of the cab, down the dock and being greeted by our crew. Oh my God this boat is beautiful. It’s a 55 foot catamaran called Nyaminami. Ray (Di’s other half and engineer) greets us first, followed by Nui - our Thai chef….yes…you heard me right, we have Thai chef on board. Have I mentioned heaven before????
We
all pick a bunk and settle in. Karl and I have the forward “queen” cabins with their own ensuite toilets/showers ….Scott and Jay have the aft “twin” cabins that each sport their own platform swim deck off back. Keely was the latecomer so she paid a bit less… she’s sharing luggage and bathroom space with me but she’s agreed to sleep upstairs in either the “saloon” (aka living room) or up top on the covered deck. Everyone is happy!!
It’s time to finally sail away!! We clink glasses/beers… and we’re off!! Oh.. errr.. well.. except the electrical plug connecting us to the dock (charging) will not unplug. The boys try and try and the dern thing won’t come unplugged!!! Finally, the marina crew is called over where one gent finally pulls and yanks, pulls and yanks, and finally the plug comes undone,….. well.. when one of the three prongs finally breaks off that is. Oh well - we’ll worry about that when we get to the next marina which is the end of the trip - we’re off!!!! Drinks clink again and we set asail…. A whole 50 yards to the fuel dock where we must refuel….. hmmmm. While
we’re on the fuel dock..I look over and see some strange fluid dripping from the steering wheel. I tell Ray about it and the next thing I know he’s on the radio calling a mechanic explaining that the steering has locked up, we’re at the fuel dock and we can’t move!!!
This mess keeps us stranded on the fuel dock for at least an hour (keep in mind - stranded for us the passengers means being fed beer after beer by our new best friend Nui - life still doesn’t suck terribly. ) Apparently if these engineers don’t fix the steering in the next half hour, the tide will go out and we’ll be stuck sleeping on the boat at the fuel dock in Phuket overnight. We all become religious and begin to pray very hard.
29 and a half minutes later.. the engineers are done and we’re sailing out of the channel. Di and Ray are the captains extraordinaire!! They’ve pulled it out and we’re sailing out to sea!!!!
The sail is incredible…everything you think of when you think of Thailand. Great limestone cliffs and incredible white sand beaches…just stunning. We sail about an hour before
reaching a small deserted island that is our destination...which of course I've already forgotten the name of. Only two other boats nearby, we drop anchor and settle in. Jay, Keely and Karl take the sea kayaks over to the small beach. Only once they reach the beach do we get perspective on how big this island actually is. They look like little ants on the beach! The cliffs are amazing.. trees growing out of every crevice no matter what the angle.
It’s a quiet night once everyone is back aboard. Nui makes the most incredible thai meal for us. I can already tell no one will lose weight on this trip. A few drinks and laughs later…. And I think we all crash about 10pm. We are officially on boat time.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.066s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0359s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb