On into Thailand

All was well back on the home front.  Simon, the chap looking after our three boats, did a sterling job.  I was expecting to be attacked by a wall of mould upon opening up but it was surprisingly clear of anything untoward.  He'd aired it out regularly.  Thank you, Simon.

By the time we returned, we only had two days remaining to provision, fuel up, scrape the hull of a carpet of barnacles and check out.  And, considering that one of those days was a Friday (in a Muslim country everything shuts down on a Friday), it was a bit hectic trying to get all our ducks in a row.

We were going to take the short hop to Satun but after studying this option a bit more, we opted for an overnight trip all the way to Phuket.  This just meant that we weren't able to stop at the lovely array of islands en route - our visas had to be used prior to March 3rd.  Not serious, we'll visit them on the way back down again.

I've managed to download two-thirds of my photos and now need to pick through them so I can post a few.  Sadly, the damaged SD card was unrecoverable so I've lost all the photos between leaving Hanoi and arriving in Saigon.  I'll try to borrow a few from Karen but she and Jason have already left so it could be a while before I can.  I could cry and it was a brand new card that I'd just bought in Hanoi. ($&@!%#*¥€, mutter mutter - Chinese junk!). I'll post them by region for the time being and then incorporate them into the blog at a later date.

Later addition:  we've arrived in Ao Chalong, the check-in port for Phuket.  The trip up was uneventful but we only managed some decent sailing on the second half of the trip.  As usual, there was either no wind or it was right on the nose for the first part of the journey.  

Check-in was quite an ordeal as the forms were extremely lengthy, numerous, repetitive and confusing.  It appears that small sailing vessels are treated the same as huge cargo ships.  Anyway, we're here and next is to sort out SIM cards for internet connections.