Sail to Koh Samui
18 September 2014 | Bo Phut, Koh Samui, Thailand
Steve

The Perhenlian Islands north of Redang were quite pleasant where we found secluded beaches where we could mess around, beautiful clear emerald waters and an abundance of colourful fish and corals. We got a few dives in at the north end and took plenty of u/w shots and had dinners at the local budget resorts.
Unfortunately there wasn't any internet to be found to keep the blog up - but we are connected in other ways!
We left Perhenlian for the 2 day trip to Koh Samui on Sunday 14th Sept with a forecast calling for 20kts but what we encountered were 30-40kts gales - at least in the right direction on a beam reach! It was rough ride but was a true test for the us handling the L450 and I must admit she performed better than I would have expected. We had the 3rd reef in most times. We did have our issues - the main sail downhaul line became loose and eventually tangled in the genoa at the top furler. This, and that we needed to remove the outboard from the dingy, we decided to move toward the coast at the Malay/Thai border into calm waters and climbed the mast to release the downhaul line and remove and secure the outboard on the stern mount. Then we punished on back into 30kts for 1.5 days to K Samui. The night shifts were shared between Axel and I and Ty and Rose did great support. There were plenty of squalls, fishing and squid boats to dodge. Overall it was a great experience for us on this new boat giving it the shaking out it needed. But ... our future planned voyages will be with forecasts of lessor wind!
Koh Samui is quite a developed island with most amenities but its core industry is tourism - no doubt - with hotels and resorts surrounding. We cleared in the boat with the harbour master and customs and then to immigration to get our month long visa - this was very straight forward.
We arrived to K Samui at 04:00hrs, well in the dark, coming from offshore with 30kts into the calm Cheweng Bay where we anchored in 9m in mud. After clearance/immigration, we dropped the yellow Q flag and put up Rose's home made Thai flag and sailed up to Bo Phut bay where there are other cruisers here, calm waters but quite a shallow anchorage at 2.2m low tide.