01-01-01 Happy New Year! Hope 2001 brings lots of good health and good times to everyone. We kicked in the new year in Patong Beach, Phuket. Actually the Thai year is 2544, not 2001 so we celebrated both dates. Lots of fireworks last night, with a superb panoramic view from SIMMER's bow. The noise started just after dark and went on all night until the grand finale of large airborne rockets from 11:30 p.m. to about 12:15 a.m., the entire length of the 2 mile beach. Patong is the hotspot on Ko Phuket. Interesting place, 15 years ago it was a sleepy, Muslim fishing village. Nowadays, the mosques are tucked behind a muddle of hotels, bars and shops. It's a very touristy, neon-flashy kind of place - just the right touch for New Year's celebration. We did check out the night life, the night before New Year's eve. What a crazy place! Lots of restaurants, bars, hotels, discos, souvenir shops, noodle stands, go-go bars, massage parlors, ... you name it. Late at night things get pretty wild. On one of the main streets local katoeys (transsexuals) strut their stuff - something not for the faint of heart. And hawkers are everywhere, tempting you to check out dancing at the go-go bars, or sell you a watch - a date for the night. It's the peak of the tourist season now and many Europeans are escaping the cold weather back home in Scandinavia, Germany and France. The place is crowded. We've heard from our family in the northeast U.S. and they are having a cold, snowy winter. Hope this makes you all feel better, we were cold last night as well. When we watched the fireworks on the bow, we had to wrap ourselves in a blanket - it was fairly windy and cold, probably 70°F with the wind chill factor! We even thought about drinking hot cocoa instead of champagne. Ha-ha. We trekked up Cape Prom Thep to check out the King's 50th Jubilee Lighthouse (50th anniversary of his coronation in 1996) and a Buddhist shrine. Neat place and great view of the surrounding islands. The lighthouse was beautiful and had a small museum inside. There were several inscriptions carved into it's marble sides, not sure what they say - but wanted to show you an example of Thai lettering. It's a very beautiful, curly-q type of script. (see picture on photo page). The shrine was interesting too. It must've had 1,000 elephant statues surrounding the base, all different sizes - from the tall ones in the photo to miniature ones the size of a golf ball. They were mostly carved from various local woods, some ceramic. It was fascinating.
01-03-01 We rented a motorcycle today and toured Phuket island. Motorcycles are an easy and very cheap way to get around. It only costs $200 baht/day which equates to $4.70 US dollars, and we drove around all day and used $1.00 US for gas. We visited the shell museum, waterfalls, an orchid garden, yachtie friends in the marina and had dinner out. It was fun, we survived without a scratch, even driving on the left side of the road and a few "creative" Thai drivers. It was a full day on the bike from early morning to almost bedtime and our bums could use a Thai massage! Phuket is a "jumping-off place" where yatchies leave for the next leg of their journey across the Indian Ocean (IO), either to the Red Sea or Africa. So we will be separating from many of the friends we've met along the way. A few left right after Christmas. Most are heading west across the Indian Ocean and north up the Red Sea, as the majority of sailors take that route. We'll be heading west across the IO, then south to Africa. Some friends we might see again in the Atlantic - the Caribbean islands. But for our European friends, it's the end of their circumnavigation, once they get to the Mediterranean, they're just about home. We plan to stay in touch with many of them via email. It's a sad time to know we won't see some of our cruising mates again, but we have lots of fond memories and pictures to remember them by.
1-11-00 Well, the northeast monsoon winds haven't quite filled in yet, so we're still in Thailand. We had planned to leave somewhere around Jan 10th-15th, but the winds have been light and variable. By now, the monsoon is supposed to bring 10-15 knots of NE wind, so we would have a good push across the Indian Ocean. We've kept in touch via the HF radio, with friends that have left in the last week or so, and they've been motoring most of the time. We don't carry enough fuel to motor the entire 1,600 nm passage to the Maldives, and we don't want to float-around out there any longer than we have to, so we'll wait a bit longer for some decent wind. (Our motoring range is about 900 nm, then we're out of fuel!) Our Thailand visa is up in 2 more days, so we decided to head back to Malaysia. Langkawi is only 120 nm south of Phuket so we'll go there to provision up, prepare ourselves and SIMMER for the ocean passage, .... and hope for wind. We're also hoping our friends from WINGS of TIME, ROSE of SHARON, and WANDERLUST will catch up to us. They are all a bit behind schedule and haven't arrived yet in Langkawi.
1-22-01 We're back in Langkawi, Malaysia. It's nice to come back to a place we've visited before, and know where everything is. Since we've been cruising, we haven't gone back to the same place after we've sailed away - we're always travelling on to a new place. It's comforting to know where all the important spots are: post office, internet cafe, market, bakery, hardware store, the store with the cheapest beer, etc ... Usually once we get the "lay of the land" of a certain village or city, we move on to another island /city/country and have to find everything all over again! We have a few days of boat preparation and final provisioning and we'll be off to the Maldives. As far as boat preparation, we had another wind generator failure, another magnet came loose inside the Wind Bugger™ hub (we had the same problem back in October '00). So we need to take the Wind Bugger™ down off the 8 foot pole, take it apart and re-glue the magnet. Frustrating, since we did one of the magnets less than 3 months ago. Not sure if it the same magnet that came loose, or a different one . Probably not the same one, since Pat did such a smashing job of gluing it in! (It was a different one! - Pat). Also we'll go over the entire rig - up the mast to check each wire-stay and mechanical fitting, go over the engine, top off our diesel and water tanks, and ensure SIMMER is ship-shape for an ocean passage. Our friends on ROSE of SHARON arrived a couple days ago and are on a similar schedule across the Indian Ocean as us.
1-27-01 Most of the projects are completed (they're never all completed), and SIMMER is laden with food and drink. Today is Saturday, we'll clear out from Malaysia on Monday, Jan 29th and head out to sea again. We plan to sail northwest making for Sri Lanka, then turn southwards to the Maldives archipelago. Our destination is Addu atoll on the southern end of the Maldives chain. If you look at a map, it seems like we will be going out of our way and should sail a straight course from Malaysia to Addu. But the winds and currents in the Indian Ocean predicate our passage, so we go north a bit first. Remember, you can't change the winds, but you can adjust your course. This leg of our journey is around 1,600 nm and will take us 16-18 days - depending on the winds and currents. We are actually looking forward to an offshore passage like this again. We've done 4,200 nm of coastal navigation since we left Brisbane, Australia last April. It's not a relaxing type of sailing, always looking around for navigational hazards. Ocean passages are somewhat easier - not much land, reefs, boat traffic or fish traps to worry about out there! Just Mother Nature. So this will be it for our webpage updates for awhile. There's a chance that we may find an internet cafe in Addu, not sure. If so, we may squeeze in one more update before our passage to Chagos Archipelago. Then 3 months in Chagos, onto Mayotte, Madagascar, Mozambique, and South Africa by November 2001. Refer to our itinerary for estimated dates. So we'll close our log with an Irish blessing - until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand - and us as well!
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