Calypso's Journal: Final excursion

Our time in Phuket has almost come to an end but to make the most of it, we spent our last few days around the beautiful Phang Nga Bay visiting two more anchorages. The first being Koh Roi, a small island covered in numerous rock pinnacles.

I've cheated and inserted an aerial photo taken from the cruising guide as the ones we took at water level don't really show them to their full advantage. Quite spectacular.

We'd crossed the bay to get there at high tide due to the very shallow waters but, true to form, after skirting along at well under 10 metres the entire way which is always a bit nerve-wracking, when it came time to anchor, it suddenly became very deep and we motored around and around trying to find something under 15 metres in which to drop our hook. How's this possible? We could have anchored anywhere along the route with no difficulties at all but yup, when we want to get close to the island, the bottom falls out. Even when we left, it suddenly shallowed out again and we were back to just a few metres under the keel.

It was only a couple of miles to the next island of Koh Kudu Yai which has two open-ended hongs. Personally, we thought this was far more beautiful than the over touristy James Bond Island and better still as there were no other boats and therefore no tourists other than Lop To who arrived shortly after us to join us for our last few days.

After circling the island and visiting the hongs, a great idea came to mind, “let's have a BBQ”! And so we prepared all the food and went off to the large hong we'd visited earlier in the day which had a lovely beach. But, hmmmm..... we failed to consider the tide which was now out. The beach was there all right but we couldn't get to it. The water had all but disappeared exposing a shallow coral-covered bottom making it impossible to traverse. Damn! And earlier we'd just been saying how nice it would be to bring the boats around into the hong and anchor there for the night. Ha, no chance!

We then went off looking for another beach and several attempts later, finally found one which required only a short hop across some exposed dead coral. Wood gathered, drinks poured, food laid out; now just to get the fire going. Not so easy. What little wood there was was very damp so a squirt or two of petrol was needed. No sooner had the guys got it going sufficiently to put the meat on the grill but the heavens opened up. Another damn! And it didn't stop. Pack up everything (now soaking wet) and back to the boats to turn on the stove. Oh the joys of the cruising life!

Not to be totally thwarted, Kerstin made a cake the following day so we could enjoy the hong's beach at high tide with cake and tea/coffee. Such a gorgeous spot. And while we were there, Paul found an abandoned palm tree still in its nursery bag with roots bulging to get out. This was definitely not good so he dug a hole using a fallen branch as an improvised shovel and planted the poor thing using our drinking water and saying a few kind words in the hopes that it will survive. They're usually pretty hardy.

We left with the tide the following morning to return to Ao Chalong to do our final provisioning and to check out. Perhaps we'll have a chance to return prior to crossing the Indian on our way back to South Africa.

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