Guest blog post by visitor Cassie

Worth the wait, Cassie has kindly written a guest blog post from their visit on Sophia in the second half of April. Visitors are such a great reminder of how fantastic our cruising life is and Cassie's post below is a testimony to that. Thanks so much for coming to visit us and for writing this.

" I wanted freedom, open air and adventure. I found it on the sea " - Alaine Gerbault

With these words in mind, we set off for our own adventure on board SY Sophia!

Leaving behind the growing chilliness of Argentina and after re packing some summer essentials in Sydney we landed in the Malaysian night to a wall of humidity and boy did that make me happy! Astrid wasn't lying when she said 'no long pants or sleeves required!'

We awoke the next morning to a beautiful Langkawi morning, boats docked all around, the sound of water lapping at the boat, we were in heaven.

That same day we headed off to Thailand! I hadn't been onboard a yacht since Phil's Mum and Dad, Colleen and Ron had their old Beneteau cruising around the Whitsunday Islands and wasn't sure how this body was going to be on water again! Worse still was Pablo, being a mountain man rarely ever on water he had as I discovered been popping his sea sickness tablets from the night before! Luckily neither of us felt sick and we cruised happily into Lipe Island that evening.

Lipe was quintessential postcard Thailand! From the long boats, white sand beaches and azure blue waters it couldn't have looked more idyllic. We drank coconut and mango shakes, ate Pad Thai and curries and of course got our white untouched skin completely burnt! There is nothing better than being able to jump into sea water at any time the heat requires it!

We headed off in search of good snorkelling and weren't disappointed. On the other side of Lipe was beautiful coral reefs, full of vibrant fish and coloured anemones. We spent hours in these waters emerged in another world and time.

Exploring on Sophia opened up a whole new world of travel. There are places you can access and thing you can see are just not possible via land. We explored islands and trekked to waterfalls. We dove and swam and explored. We ate and drank and played too many games of Settlers of Catan! (Phil you are a monster!)

Its a wonderful world amongst this boating community, always there are welcoming neighbours to share stories and advice.. and not to mention recipes! Lucky for us we had the best cook around, Astrid is, as all the other boat families know, is a great cook! We were lucky to have fresh baked bread in the mornings and cakes for afternoon tea. (and thanks to Phil for being the best washer up around!)

After spending a blissful week or so around Thailand's wonderful islands and spending more time to the water than out, we headed back to Langkawi thoroughly toasted, salted and happy.

These two are living the dream! We enjoyed our time on Sophia so much and I in particular have been re inspired to pursue this lifestyle in the future! (currently familiarising myself with all things catamaran!)

Thankful to have such a great cousin in Phil and he in turn having such a great girlfriend in Astrid! Thank you both for the weeks of wonderful adventures and opening up your gorgeous home on the water to us! We will be seeing you soon, very very soon!

Cassa and Pablo

April's cruising expenses for Thailand and Malaysia

This post is way overdue, but my old laptop packed up. I finally got a new one now, and yes, therefore May will be an expensive one!

April's expenses came in at NZ$ 1,104, so pretty average. It was atypical in that we had visitors for two weeks, Cassie and Pablo, and they kindly paid for several of our meals out, which probably explains why groceries is higher than eating out. Only other thing to note is how much more expensive laundry is in Malaysia compared to Thailand.

Four nationalities onboard Sophia

We arrived back in Langkawi (Malaysia) the first week of April and spent just over a week there before we got new visitors, yeah, we love visitors. For the first time it was Phil's visitors, his cousin Cassie and her boy friend Pablo. We are now four nationalities on Sophia: New Zealand, Danish, Australian and Argentinean, which to me is pretty cool.

Immediately we sailed back to Thailand with them. Langkawi is nice and there's lots of beautiful anchorages, but one thing Langkawi unfortunatley lacks, is clear water. Koh Lipe just 5 hours north is much better. We will probably just hang around the Butang group (which Koh Lipe is part of) and then head back to Langkawi.

During our week in Langkawi, we didn't do a whole lot of interesting and exciting stuff, hence no blog post. Both Phil and I did some sewing, Phil a sail, I some clothes and various other things. Langkawi is cruiser central and right now most are finishing up in Thailand and heading south as it's chance-over season and the SW monsoon will kick in some time in May. It meant lots of our friends were already there, or turning up, so good times were had. I'll let the photos do the rest of the talking. Especially the underwater photos taken with the new camera, I love it already!

sunset over Telaga harbour on Langkawi, lots of cruising boats gathered there at the moment

all the cruising kids had their own fire on the beach

yeah, back to rotis in Malaysia

and cheap beer, Carlsberg makes these skol, less than 50 cents per beer :-)

I made new tops for the Nalukai girls, here Phoebe sporting hers

Phil and Argentinean Pablo

Phil's cousin Cassie (classic mistake of underestimating sun on the first day) and I at Lipe

it's a good street dog life on Lipe

and back to Thailand's curries

March's cruising costs for Thailand

I knew it was going to be an expensive month already at the beginning of the month when I ordered a new underwater camera and a new kindle on amazon. Unfortunately our underwater camera has give up, been too deep (over 10 m)  too often I'm afraid. The new one is good to 15 meters, so hopefully that should be fine, if not is supposed to warm me I'm going too deep. Phil killed my kindle when he put a knee onto the screen, ups. It's very hard to be without a kindle, we LOVE them.

All up we spent NZ$ 2477 for the month of March, definitely one of the more expensive months. Two big shopping trips (with car hire) didn't really help either, although we did get some yummy things we have been missing, e,g. falaffel mix, lollies and sour cream to name a few.

We spent a lot on boat bits as well, specifically $404 on winch service and repair. It took them two goes to get it fixed, and over two weeks, not very impressive, but at least the winch is finally working now and we're happy to be able to move around again.

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.