Beautiful and typical Thai: Phang Nga Bay

Our anchor winch was finally repaired (it needed new brushes), and the last week we have been exploring Phang Nga Bay. It's the big bay between Phuket island and the mainland, or the northern part of that anyway. Here's a link to wikipedia about it. Apart from beaches, the image I have of Thailand is steep cliffs and green water and we have seen lots of that and it's really really pretty. Another cool thing is we have kind of been buddy boating with Nalukai, the three cute Aussie kids (see last post) and their nice parents.

We have been missing hanging out with people our age, not that there's anything wrong with older people, we have met lots lovely older cruisers, but sometimes it's nice to hang with people our own age. Kids boats seem to be our solution :-) Sure, they are a bit older than us, but only 10 years or so, not 20-30 years older like most cruisers. And the kids help the average down and it's fun experiencing their perspective of the cruising life.

I don't really need to write much more, instead I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. I have taken so many pictures, that I have added another bunch to facebook.

looking straight up from an enclosed lagoon (entered though a tunnel)

there's another lagoon in behind here

this is inside the lagoon, cheer cliffs behind me

It's a race (they won)!

We climbed 1237 steps to the top of this mountain where there was a temple (below). Our legs are still sore...

Nemesis

OK, so we now know Nemesis read out last blog post about Cruising is (not) fixing your boat in exotic locations. Well, our anchor winch wasn't repaired after all. It's a bit of a saga by now and is still to be continued. Its motor and gearbox was serviced and the gearbox had some seals replaced, but that still didn't do the trick. The weird thing is that sometimes it works for maybe 30 seconds, then stops. It's now back at the shop being rewinded, fingers crossed that will solve the problem.

It's OK though, we have been having a good time nonetheless. For the last two weeks we have been anchored up at the top of Phuket by Yacht Haven marina where Nalukai (one of the boats we met at Surins) is also doing various boat work and a generator is giving them grief also. They have three girls, Phoebe (11), Hatty (9) and Willow (7) and I have had a blast playing with the girls in the pool every day, teaching them to make friendship bracelets and baking them cakes. One night we had two of them on Sophia for a sleep-over. Nalukai is a 50 feet catamaran and each girl has a double bed cabin for herself, so they found Sophia very small, but cosy :-) A good time was had by all, even Phil!

Otherwise we haven't really seen or done anything exciting. One highlight was the first rain we had on Saturday since December, pretty crazy to go three months without rain.

No photos of the offending winch holding us up, but of all the fun we have had with the girls.

Phil and I was invited along to Phoebe's 11th birthday party. Great fun and never mind that Phil and I were the only ones without kids there... I baked the cake and Phoebe decorated it herself

I guess it was a typical cruising birthday, the kids were ranging in age from 7 to 14 and a mix of boys and girls

February's cruising expenses for Thailand

A quiet and somewhat typical month I think, coming in at NZ$ 865. For the first time in half a year or so groceries is a bigger item than eating out. We still eat out a lot, but we have been to more low-key Thai places and we have also enjoyed the good selection that Thai supermarkets offer. Food all up accounts for 71% of our expenses for the month of February. I also love how cheap it is to do laundry in Thailand. And filling our water tanks with drinking water was also only about $9.