I feel that the sun was waiting for me to earn my sailing stripes before it came back.
Yesterday started in a very unpromising fashion - rain looked set in for the day, and Mark & I were in no hurry to set off for our days sail, loitering around eating Graeme’s full English breakfast until 11am
We left Lanta Old Town with a Plan A and a Plan B - Plan A was to do a couple of hours sail around the Southern tip of Ko Lanta, and then spending the night in the port to the North West of the Island. Plan B was to press on to Ko Phi Phi, which was about a 6 hour sail.
According to the weather forecast, the following day was due to be torrential rain, so all in all, it wasn’t looking good…..
…until we rounded the tip of Lanta, and found WIND.
Now, as you know, I’ve been much more of a ‘pass me a G&T and the sun cream’ kind of sailor so far, but I feel now that I’ve become a TRUE sailor, cos I didn’t whinge at all about no sun, and nor did I whinge about helming all day.
In fact, I LOVED my sailing yesterday - we managed to get fantastic speeds (7.8 knots was our record, which is very good for a big, heavy, ocean going boat towing a dinghy) and just shot all the way to Ko Phi Phi.
AND Mark said I was good on the helm, and that generally women make better helmsmen as they have better concentration. Which to me sounds like an admission that women make better drivers…..
So we moored up in Phi Phi overnight. Phi Phi is a very popular island, but no one’s quite sure why it’s SO popular. The film ‘the beach’ was filmed at the adjoining island, and it’s certainly very beautiful, but it’s now a party town. Having had my now customary early night (a shocking 8.15pm), I woke up at 1, and came up on deck for a couple of hours, having a bit of a singsong to the music from the clubs on shore. They do like Shakira A LOT.
Today we expected to be another dreary day, and once again, it wasn’t looking good, as it was drizzling as we left Phi Phi. Because there are 2 islands so close to each other, it creates a kind of wind tunnel. I was in the midst of trying to haul the sails up when we got hit with 38 knot winds. (Which is very fast - remember the Beaufort Scale from school? It’s force 8 which is officially a Gale - or Very Windy Indeed). You can imagine me trying to cling onto the mast for dear life whilst winching and trying to re-hook in a sail slug (clippy thing) that had come loose. It was not a glamorous moment.
BUT
Just 2 short little hours later, the sun decided that I’d paid my dues once more and decided to smile again, for the rest of the day. Lovely. We dropped anchor at an island called Ko Rang, just off Phuket, having clocked 298 miles on the trip, at about 3pm. I had a swim and a walk on the deserted beach, writing my name in the silver sand for posterity, then swam back to the boat for my bath (shampoo actually works very well in salt water). A lazy couple of hours was then spent lying on the foredeck, looking at the sky, listening to my ipod. Bliss.
I can’t believe how lucky I am to be here.
