We left early in the morning and sailed up the coast to visit Neill island.  This is one of the islands you can visit but the surf was too bad so we couldn’t land the dinghy.  We went snorkeling in crystal clear water and saw a some lovely fish life but the coral has been seriously depleted here and most of it is dead.  There are patches where there is new growth so hopefully it is recovering but it will be a very long process and many years before the reef is pristine again.  There are conflicting reasons the coral is in sure a poor state – we have been told it is global warming and also that the tsunami which hit these islands so badly caused the reef to lift bringing it closer to the surface. Either way it is very sad to see such large areas of reef dead – especially considering most of these islands are uninhabited and
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It was a four day sail via the Similan islands to the Andamans arriving with an escort of dolphins. We arrived about 4pm and spent the evening lying on the trampoline listening to Indian music coming from shore.  We were in definately in India now.  After a good nights sleep we prepared for the well reported arduous check in procedure which we had been warned could entail a  wait all day for the officials to come to your boat, so we were pleasantly surprised when they turned up at 11am! All 11 of them – we even had the coastguard contingent come over who proceeded to take -continue reading…>