Today, Saturday 2 July, we have a little time to relax and consolidate after a pretty busy but wonderfully fun-filled week. We arrived on Koh Phi Phi island from Phuket yesterday afternoon after completing our sailing course... yes, we are now qualified day skippers! Here's a little summary of how we've spent the last 5 days:
Last Sunday morning, after a two-day stay in Hong Kong (the end of our Intrepid tour through China), we flew to Bangkok and straight on from there to Phuket, where Sunsail has its base in Thailand. We arrived at the Boat Lagoon at around 4pm and met Paul, our instructor for the week, as well as the rest of the crew - Aaron and Jason, two Aussies working in Hong Kong (also doing Day Skipper), and Jack, a Brit (doing Competent Crew).
Over drinks, Paul outlined the plan: to sail a circular route of around 140 miles around the large bay to the east of Phuket over the 5 days ahead. The route would offer superb scenery and plenty of chance to snorkel on the reefs. Each of us would be skipper for one day, which involved plotting the course for the day's sail, ensuring safety on board and instructing the crew
After familiarising ourselves with the boat and enjoying a tasty meal in the marina restaurant - very posh - we retired to our cabins aboard Intan, the Gibsea 43 that would be our home for the next five days. It was a hot & sweaty night with thousands of mozzies out to plague us, so we didn't get much sleep!
Mid-morning on Monday we set off in a fair wind for Phi Phi, with Paul, the instructor, as skipper. Before anchoring on the harbourside of the island, we moored in a secluded little bay for a snorkel - our first taste of the magnificent underwater-life the Andaman Sea has to offer. The colourful reef fish simply adore bananas, so we took some bananas into the water with us, and within seconds they were swarming around. Delightful!
In the evening we went ashore for a meal and some drinks at the notorious beachfront Hippies Bar and Restaurant, which plays host to backpackers who look like they've been here for way too long. At 11pm the fireshow kicked off - a Phi Phi beach bar phenomenon that involves a few mad youngsters juggling and swinging fire torches in high-speed, rhythmical movements around their heads - quite dazzling.
We went ashore again for another explore by daylight the next morning, and Rich and I staked out scuba diving course options. The reefs around here are renowned diving spots, and the waters are crystal clear, so despite the island's hippie backpacker trail status (which we don't quite fit), we figured Phi Phi would be a good place to come back to for a scuba diving course. At noon, we raised the anchor and set off on the second leg, with Aaron as skipper.
Another beautiful day and two opportunities to stop off for a bit of snorkelling... a short hop took us to Bamboo Island, where we anchored to explore the reef, and then on to Chicken Island (so named for the protruding rock shaped like a chicken's head), where we found even better snorkelling. We had an early dinner of spag. bol. cooked by Rich, before setting off on our night crossing to Krabi at 7pm. This was the first real night sail either of us had done, and we loved it - quite and eerie feeling puffing along on a run in the pitch dark. Aaron made light work of some pretty complicated pilotage to get us up the estuary to our quiet river anchorage.
Wednesday it was my turn to skipper... and, Murphy's Law, it was by no means a simple sail despite my best laid plans. The route for the day involved a stop-off at an island called Koh Hong before reaching the next anchorage at Koh Yao, and the course I plotted that morning seemed pretty straight forward. However, once we had cleared the river estuary and the channel, it quickly became clear that the wind direction required us to beat all the way - tacking back and forth while keeping within a fairly narrow stretch of water between scattered islands. Beating is time consuming and demanding on the skipper (requiring intelligent guesses as to when to put in the next tack) so it ended up being a long day for me.
However our afternoon stop at beautiful Koh Hong was balm for the body and mind. A 'hong' is a collapsed cave which forms a hidden lagoon at the centre of a small island - pretty common in this bay filled with pointy islands of sheer limestone (very similar to the karsts around Yangshuo). We explored the hong with the dinghy before heading on to our anchorage off Koh Yao.
Thursday morning we set off at 8.30am sharp with Jason as skipper. Our last full day's sailing took us further north toward Pang Nga, where the landscape was even more dramatic - thousands of upright little islands jutting out of the opaque green water. There wastn't much wind, so we enjoyed two leisurely stops to swim and explore sandy white beaches fringing the islands. In the afternoon the wind picked up, and we had about two hours or so of man overboard training - practising the various techniques to manouvre the boat under sail and motor when recover an MOB. Very interesting and necessary. After another full day, we spent a relaxing last evening on board - steaks on the BBQ, a few drinks and some chat with the crew of another Sunsail school boat, with whom we had rendezvoused at the anchorage.
Rich's turn as skipper came around on Friday morning - poor thing, he had to mobilise the troops at 4am for a super-early start! The tides were such that we had to get back to the boat lagoon by 8am to get into the marina, so there was simply no other option than an early start! A few cups of coffee did the trick, and we motored off before dawn. The early start and the libations of the night before left some members of our crew looking a little worse for wear (I was OK for a change!), but we made it to the marina on time, where we spent a couple of hours 'pontoon-bashing' - practising our berthing. I'm glad to report that neither of us did any serious damage to the boat!
After scrubbing the boat and packing up our stuff, we sat down for a debrief. Paul saw fit to issue all of us with our 'tickets'. What a feeling! It's something we've been wanting do achieve for soooo long, and now we've done it. And what better place to learn than the tropical paradise waters of Thailand. It's been a full and rewarding week.
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