Our plan to stay in Langkawi

So, the blog has been pretty quiet the last several months and we haven't done any cruising. We have been brewing plans. I actually totally missed our two year cruising anniversary. It was end of May 2012 that we left Christchurch, and three weeks later we left New Zealand. We have LOVED the cruising life, and we have visited many beautiful tropical islands and met a ton of interesting people, both locals and other cruisers. We pretty much followed our route that we decided on back in the Pacific, but we never knew what was going to happen after Thailand.

Even though cruising life is pretty cheap (much cheaper than most people's lives back home, see my monthly costs here), we are going to run out of funds. We could go back to New Zealand or maybe even Denmark to work. But we could also stay! So that's what we're going to try.

Phil is already selling sails to other cruisers (plus of course old customers back in NZ) that we meet, so that's what we're going to expand. He designs and engineers sails on the computer, and they get made at a big whole sale loft/factory exactly to his specifications, just like he would make them at home. This seems to be the direction sail making is taking.

Langkawi is cruiser central. Hundreds of boats pass though every year and there are three marinas, plus lots of boats on anchor (us included). It's taxfree and it's more of less halfway between New Zealand and Denmark. We don't know how long we'll stay, we'll just wing it, like we do most things.

I'm off to Denmark tomorrow for a month. Phil is going to Phuket Race Week next week also, but then he'll be back on Sophia in Langkawi. I'm going to stop posting our monthly budgets, because we won't be cruising as such for a while anyway, so it's not that relevant. I can also guarantee that I won't be blogging much, but I'll still try and chronicle our life, the blog is mostly for our own sake to have as a keepsake.

Langkawi's icon, the sea eagle. Sophia is achored out there in the background

Yikes! What happened to our anchor after it had been down for a long while!

I bought myself a bike! It's was so cheap, just under NZ$ 100, but of course pretty basic and with no gears

dinghy dock by night

Traditional Malay house on Langkawi, although most people have converted to more modern concrete houses

Erja and Phil on black sand beach (!) during a hash run. Erja is a lovely Finish lady who is also a sailmaker, but just retired

Langkawi has many hornbills, this is just up the hill behind Kuah, the main town. Check out an amazing photo of a Great Hornbill I posted on facebook that Pablo (visitor) took back while he was visiting us

our anchorage

halfway up the mast on a traditional Malay junk rig

And of course another beautiful sunset, we can never get enough of those