September 2015, we sailed from Puteri Harbour,Malaysia, across Singapore , up the east coast of Peninsular Malaya towards the Sea of Thailand. A journey of 400 miles to reach Ko Samui where we cleared customs and immigration. We also had to clear the Marine department where the Harbour master demanded 1500 bahts before he could give us the necessary papers into Thailand. We got a receipt for 100 bahts, the rest went into his pocket. Corruption of government officials is the bane of life in Sea East Asia.
We had wonderful sailing weather with the occasional rain storm. One of the rain storms had a massive water spout. It was very spectacular and very glad we're not under it.
Another 300 miles saw us approaching one of the islands near Ko Chang. The sun was setting and the sea was ablaze with lights from the fishing boats. We played cat and mouse with the fishing boats, dodging nets , floats, trawlers especially paired trawlers as the gap between them was to be avoided. We finally dropped anchor at midnight with a sigh of relief. Happy to finally have a good night sleep after 10 days of sailing.
The Ko Chang Archipelago is a group of islands near the Thai-Cambodian border. The islands are hilly, covered with dense forests. Villages and small towns dot the coast. The names Ko Chang, Ko Kut, Ko Mak....... became familiar names as we anchored in all of them. Because of the hilliness of the islands and the heavy rainfall throughout the year, there are numerous streams that flow into the sea. With such high fresh water contamination of the sea, the marine life was rather dismal. Corals do not grow well, thereby the rest of the other sea life that are dependent on the corals are also very sparse. A far cry from the wonderful sea life of the Andaman Islands.
Donne, a friend from NZ came to visit us . She bussed from Bangkok. There was a marina in Ko Chang. We arranged to pick her up from the marina. We 're told that there was at least 2 m of water at high tide. We draw 1.8 m. The morning she was due we tried to motor into the marina. There was a dug up marked channel into the marina. Alas, Pewter was stuck on the bottom as we started into the marked channel. There was only 1m of water and it was almost high tide. We waited till high tide with no change in the depth. Now we are desperate to get out as the tide is reversing. We had to turn the boat back into the mouth of the marked channel. Leo rowed the dinghy with our spare anchor, dropped it at 45 deg to the bow and I winched the rope in , in the process, the bow turned slightly . We repeated this exercise several times till the bow was pointing towards the open sea. We then dropped the anchor again directly in front of the bow and pulled the boat into deeper water. With a sigh of relief we floated off finally after 2 hours of hard labour. Just another day of the kind of life on Pewter.
Donne stayed a week, her first time on board a sailing vessel and it was a huge learning curve for her. She enjoyed especially the 'outdoor' bathing on Pewter under the starry sky.
Eventually it was time to return to Malaysia. We decided that we would bypass Ko Samui and so avoid the corrupt Harbour Master. We hired a car and a driver, drove across Ko Chang, took a ferry to the mainland and cleared our papers near the Thai-Cambodian border. We still had to pay the Harbour Master 1000 baht instead of 100 baht. The driver and the car only cost 1800 baht a day. Glad we only had to pay normal charges to the custom and immigration departments.
With the beginning of the north east monsoon, we had lots of rain. With the rain we had good winds, we 're making 120-130 miles a day. With such good winds we decided to carry on sailing to Pangkor Marina where we hauled up the boat onto the hard for storage.. We sailed a journey of 2000 miles over 2 months.
Now we are back in NZ with our girls and grand kids and doing the things that grandparents are supposed to do, babysit, cook, keep and eye on the older ones, cart and ferry them when their parents are otherwise occupied, play bridge ....etc.
