After our successful haul out and run down to Malaysia, we came back to Thailand to meet my sister who was flying in from the UK.  We spent our first night back in Panwa bay where we met Karel & Phil from Tehani Li and Doris & Rudi from Muk for dinner on the beach. We were going to check in the next day and then go to the airport early the day after, but as luck would have it, there was a public holiday the following day so we headed straight up to Ao Po and stayed the night there. The next morning we picked up a car to go to the airport and pick up my sister Jenetta continue reading

Checking out of Malaysia is a doddle. All the authorities are in one building and you can check in and check out at the same time. We (as usual) were on a very tight time schedule, so this is exactly what we did – as you have to check into Langkawi from Penang because it is a duty free island. After the obligatory stop at the bottle shop and after filling up with diesel in Telaga we set sail for Koh Lipe – the first port of call in Thailand. The outer islands of Phuket are lovely – with a relaxed backpacker vibe. I wish we could have stayed longer this time but we needed to get to Phuket to haul out so we kept going. Koh Lanta was our next stop, and this time is was deserted. No cruising boats and few people. Even the bouncy jetty -continue reading..>

I cannot believe it has been 1 year since we left our home in Perth and sailed away to attempt to circumnavigate the world.    What a incredible year it has been for us. People ask us all the time the following questions:  Has it met our expectations? Have we loved it? Would we change anything? Have we had any major disappointments? Will we continue?  Well – we have certainly had an amazing time but I must admit there are aspects of cruising that I didn’t know about and there were far more adjustments to make than I realised.  I had been planning this trip for 5 years and had read just about everything I could on cruising and the lifestyle – including many blogs and articles. In fact the only source of information I had not tapped into was personal info – neither of us knew anyone cruising full time to give us the warts ‘n all version. Ian had harboured this dream of sailing round the world continue reading

We sailed back to the mainland and called into a few places on the way up the coast.   One of these was a small island called  Ko Phra Thong.   We saw a resort to the right and could see a couple of beach shacks on the beach so we thought we would just drop anchor, walk down the beach and see if we could grab something to eat.   Once we got to the beach we realised that this place was bigger than we thought – there were beach bungalows set back, beach bars and loungers but no people.   We found a wooden walkway with a small restaurant at the top, -continue reading …>

Having spent longer in Chalong Bay than we had intended, we decided to sail up the West Coast visiting the quieter side of Phuket, the Marine Park islands of the Similans and the Surins and head up to the border town of Ranong.   We had heard good reports of this area of Thailand, and we needed to get there before they closed the islands in mid May before the arrival of the South-west monsoon.

We had to stop on the way up to fix the gear change cable – another jury rig – continue reading…>

We need to spend some time in Chalong bay as our canvas work is taking a couple of weeks to finish so we decided to do a few trips over to the islands in Phang Nga bay.  The first one we decided upon was south – Racha.  We arrived about 5pm just as the tourists were leaving and we were just stunned continue reading…

After 5 months in Malaysia we eventually arrived in Thailand – the first port of call being a small island called Koh Lipe.  We arrived with Tereva early in the afternoon and so we headed straight to shore.  Koh Lipe is such a beautiful little island – with a hippy feel.  Lots of colour and backpackers everywhere – we were probably the oldest people there!  This place was completely different from Langkawi continue reading …