28nd June 2011
We are all enjoying this part of Thailand. Hiring a car is relatively easy, a late model Proton costs about $30 a day. You can drive around the whole island in one day, if needed. The pace of the traffic here is a lot faster than Langkawi and there are a lot more traffic lights and round-a-bouts. Food and beer is not much different in price to Langkawi, but the Thai food is something else.
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| Our old friend "Alderbaron Bay" anchored in Ao Chalong Bay, Phuket |
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| Ao Chalong |
On the morning of 22nd May we pulled anchor and left Ao Chalong then anchored off a small island called Ko Rang Yai N07 57.2 E098 26.7, about 2.5nm from Boat Lagoon and the Royal Phuket Yacht Club. It was raining quite hard, but from what we could see there was a nice resort on the island and not much else......... Another little paradise. Our passage that morning was only 15nm, but as always was filled with adventure.
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| Anchored off Ko Rang Yai |
We had noticed a lot of green growth along the waterline of "Cockatoo II", "Mandella II", and "Catcha Star. This was after only a few weeks since we had slipped and cleaned "Catcha Star" in Rebak, Langkawi. The first thing we noticed was that we could only achieve 5kts and the engine would not rev higher than 2000RPM. Trying to make the yacht motor (as usual there was no wind) any faster produced a lot of black smoke and caused the motor to overheat, something that had never happened before. So we will have to dive and clean the prop and waterline on all three boats, again. "Mandella II" is a 65ft power boat with twin screws, not an easy job. Hopefully now we are out of Chalong Bay, the growth rate will slow down.
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| Mandella II |
Another reason for moving on from Chalong was the lack of dinghy facilities on land, we had also heard that a number of yachts had been broken into. One we were told was robbed while the owners were asleep in the cockpit. The final straw for me was when I jumped into our dinghy the other evening, ready to head over to "Mandella II" for a sundowner. As always I had tilted the outboard so the prop was out of the water and as always there was the painter, anchor line and a bright green/ black line in the bottom of the boat. It took me a number of milliseconds to register that the bright green/ black line had not grown in diameter and was moving by itself over my bare foot. Most of you will know how much I like snakes, not at all. Cathy was still on the back of the yacht, about to jump in the dinghy after I had started the motor. All she could do was laugh and join me in a chorus four letter words as the 1.5M snake turned looked back at me, then slithered down into the water. Whisky was consumed that evening!
Ahaetulla prasina (Oriental Whip snakes)
The next day after cleaning the water intake filter and replacing the raw water impeller, we moved on again and our next anchorage was again not far up the track. We stopped at a little island called ko Rang Noi X. A lovely island with a cocktail bar, restaurant and unfortunately for the sailing budget there is a pearl shop. Mark and Paul had stayed on their yachts and were doing some maintenance, until they received a MayDay call from Peter on the VHF. Peter was looking after the three lady's and had been led into the Pearl Shop, fearing danger he called for more male help. By the time Paul and Mark got there, the negotiating was all but over and we were the proud owners of many different arrangements of pearls.
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| A happy Girl, with pearls |
Rang Noi is only about five nautical miles from Boat Lagoon, possibly the largest and most well established marina on the island of Phuket. Peter jumped in his dinghy and had a look up the channel leading into Boat Lagoon. Everyone we spoke to said you will need a Pilot to help navigate the channel into Boat Lagoon, Peter was convinced they were all correct after having a look for himself.
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| Ko Naka Yai |
The next anchorage was closer to Ao Po Grand Marina, Ko Naka Yai is at N08 03.3 E098 28.33 and has a fantastic cocktail bar on the beach and a little further north there is a beautiful timber restaurant that is part of an open hut type resort. We stayed here for four days before going into Ao Po Marina to fuel up and then anchoring just outside the marina at N 08 04.294 E098 26.732 From here we are able to use the facilities of the marina at no charge and enjoy the Ao Po Grand Marina Restaurant every now and again, their pork spare ribs are really special and they serve draft beer.
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| Ao Po Marina |
After about a week at the Ao Po anchorage and after getting the first quote to re furbish our timber work, we set sail for the northern corner of Ao Phangnga bay. We experienced wind gusts up to 25kts, but in the main we only had 8kts to 12kts. We anchored on the east side of Ko Phanak N08 10.94 E098 29.7 and then at Ko Hong N08 13.32 E098 30.54 the next day. We found some impressive caves and ate some lovely fresh prawns that the local fisherman sold to us.
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| Tracy entering one of the caves with a large Hong (inner room) |
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Some of the overhangs are huge
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From here it was on to James Bond island N08 16.654 E098 30.511, where The Man With The Golden Gun staring Roger Moore was partially filmed in 1974. Again Cathy and I received a huge tropical down poor, just minutes after we made way in the dinghy for the island. We were drenched, but you are never cold up here.
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| Where Roger Moore (007) landed the sea plane and ran up the beach in The Man With The Golden Gun 1974 |
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| The well known and filmed rock off James Bond Island |
Next was the Sea Gypsy village at N08 20.193 E098 30.360. What an amazing place this is, a huge Muslim village built on the water. We stayed for three days and had a very interesting ride/ tour in a local Long Tail boat. The “Long Tail Boats” use 2nd hand car engines, often with the gear box still attached. On a lot of the 4cyl powered boats the engines are turbo charged and you can hear the turbo’s spool up as they change gears.
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This Long Tail Ferry is fitted with a huge six cylinder truck engine. The Skipper balances on the plank while swinging on the engines
tiller and operates the gears and throttle at the same time. |
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| Sea Gypsy Muslim water village |
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| Our Long Tail Skipper for the day, he has a four cylinder turbo charged car engine and unlike most he has the luxury of a plastic chair. |
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| Water village at low tide |
We decided to pull anchor and move further north, up
Phanagna Bay. From N08 17.385 E098 37.099 the anchorage where we had been for three nights we planned to head for and anchor near N09 21.923 E098 37.374 this would all depend on the depths found, as the chart depths were very vague.
The scenery is something else and the locals are quite special some even speaking a little English. The question was, just how far up the river system could you go in a mono hull? As it happened we were delayed by one day while we rebuilt the alternator on “Catcha Star”.
We managed to get all the way up to a quiet anchorage with nearly 5M of water at N08 23.2 E098 39.5
Next Paul and Tracy off “Cockatoo II” and ourselves jumped in the two dinghies’ and went exploring further up the rivers. The fist two branches of the river we tried were a dead end, they did however allow us to use the dinghies at full speed and have a little fun. It is always important however to keep an eye out for fish traps and wooden stakes in the water.
Although hungry we decided to try the last branch of the river, before long we came across a large cave with tour guides that were eager to show us were to find the 3500 year old paintings, huge rooms (hongs), massive stalactites and stalagmites. This cost us about $2 each and was by far the best cave yet.
We then took off in the dinghy’s again heading in the direction of some smoke, hoping to find a village. A large semi submerged log almost brought an end to our dinghy race, fortunately both our outboard motors were not locked down and were therefore able to retract themselves as the outboard legs hit the log. Did we slow down after that? Just around the next bend was a row of Warrungs (floating café’s), we were welcomed in and enjoyed a beautiful Thai lunch and icy cold beer at a total cost of about $30 for all four of us.
We had a quick look around the village, but as the tide was racing out we decided it was time to get back to the yachts while there was still enough water in the river. As it was we only just had enough water in the river, and thumped a number of large rocks with the bottom of the dinghy.
Arriving back at the yachts we agreed to catch up later and cook the prawns and crayfish we had purchased of some local fishermen. Paul and Tracy headed back towards “Cockatoo II” but then turned around and came back towards us. “How much was the tide swing again Mark”? “Why do you ask Paul”? “Coz we’re sitting on the bottom, in the mud”. We were still in our dinghy and took a lap around “Catcha Star”. “Yep we are coming up out of the water too,,,,,,,,,,,,, oooops! The tide charts indicated a 2.5M swing and we had anchored in 4.8M, so we should have had plenty of water under us. We got back onboard our respective yachts and waited to see just how far the water level would drop, the attached photos tell the end result, it was a 3.8M tide swing. This can happen with overruns in a river system. Eventually Paul and Tracy came over to “Catcha Star” and in true Ozy spirit we had a few tinnies while the yachts settled on their sides and then slowly came back up again.
We then played Canaster until high tide at
midnight, following our electronic tracks we then moved to an even more beautiful area with 12M of water and anchored for the night. with no harm done, other than some salt water filters blocked with mud we carried on to our next anchorage the next morning.
