A hectic last few days.
25 December 2014 | Yacht Haven Marina
cloudy and a bit of rain.
We've been going at it for the last several days traveling all over Phuket getting things done. More provisions for the next leg of the trip, three trips to the hospital for a checkup and tests. I've been coughing for the last three months and it's time to get well. I don't want to face the Indian Ocean with this still going on. Calling our bank when they put a "fraud" freeze on our card because we've been using it so much.
When we got to Phuket back in April, we put a downpayment on a new dinghy. Now it was time to pay for it so to avoid a 6% fee for using the card--3% to the store and 3% to the card for "international" charges, we have been hitting the ATM machines around Phuket hard. Well, out bank saw all the charges on the card and put a freeze on it stopping us from getting the money we needed. It took two days to figure out what had happened before we could get it straightened out. In the meantime, we made plans to find a bigger out board motor for the new dinghy and we've been looking at ads for used one all over the island. We finally found one, an 18HP Tohatsu that runs great. Well, it did till the fuel attachment to the engine broke off when we were taking it for a test run around Chalong Bay. The current owner(manager of the Phuket Yacht Club) fixed it and we did the deal. Give him a bunch of money and our old dinghy and we could have the used(2008) motor at a decent price. Tracy even started haggling with him to try and get the price down and it worked. We did get an better price.
We've had to rent cars for the last several days to get done what we need to get done and we should be good now. We picked up some parts to fix the outboard, well not necessarily fix, but put it back to the way the manufacturer had it when it was made. The last owner(guy that sold it to the Yacht Club manager) did some customizing to the fuel lines that needed fixing or putting the actual connectors on the engine and the fuel line so they wouldn't break in the future. We found those parts today when we were driving around.
We made the final payment for the dinghy this morning(after visiting the hospital again) and made arrangements to have it deliver this afternoon. Hey, it may be Christmas in many parts of the world but in a Buddhist/Hindu/Muslim country, it's not that important a holiday. Most businesses were open as usual. Sure made getting things done a lot easier with them being open and us have the car rental. The delivery men showed up about 1600 and the new "Puff" is now sitting proudly on the foredeck waiting to get used. It was a sad sight to see the old "Puff" getting taken away but the delivery men. She was about 16 years old and in dinghy years, that's a lot of time. Most only last 5-7 years of the cruising lifestyle. Caribe makes a great dinghy. Puff had a good 10 patches on her hull and two small air leaks I could never find.
Tomorrow, one of the last things we still wanted to get done was having a cockpit table made. It's being delivered tomorrow. We had it made out of 1"thick teak in a natural finish so we can had wax it to seal the wood and not have to worry about varnish getting knocked off when it gets used. Most of the teak on Zephyr is waxed or oiled so it should blend in just fine. We'll see in a couple of days.
Tomorrow, we are out of the marina and back on the hook for a day or so before we take off for the western side of huket and up toward the border with Myanmar. We will still need to come back to Phuket for two reasons. First--to check out of the country and second, to get our replacement Rocna Anchor. The ship bringing it from China got sort of lost on it's way here. It's supposed to take about 4 days and since it left China on December 10th, it should have been here a while ago. Afraid not. It's some where out there and now might not get here till January 7th at the earliest. That's going to delay us a bit as we had hoped to be out of here and off for Sri Lanka by then to get the best winds but it is what it is and we will have to make due and just get on with it. The anchor will show up when it does and we will just have to be patient.