Today, we pretty much sorted out all the loose ends with Ivan, Geo and Morgan cleaning down the yacht while I went over the various service requirements with the marina staff - all very helpful.

I also took the sails down to Rolly Tasker Sails to be repaired and cleaned. The bimini and sprayhood is going to a local lady who is supposed to be good.

Ivan, Geo and Morgan gave a helping hand to the crew of Lady Galadriel, a 34 Beneteau Oceanis, which had some problems with sails and rigging set up. A can of cold beer was gratefully received in reward!

The photo above is the 4 of us as Ivan, Geo and Morgan left Fujin, spending tonight at a hotel before flying out to Bangkok tomorrow and then home to Dublin. I also leave tomorrow for Hong Kong and hope to be back aboard Fujin before too long.

Many thanks to all of you who have been following this blog. This is my last entry of the current series. I guess the next time I will post here will be our next extended cruise on Fujin, probably late in the year.

Fair winds to all!

This morning, we took the one hour drive down to Chalong in southern Phuket to check in through customs and immigration as well as with the harbour master - the office is pictured above.

The process was relatively painless, thanks to the lubrication afforded by an unreceipted "fees" to the cheerful immigration officer. If you do not leave Thailand on your yacht, you are supposed to post a substantial bond which is eventually refunded but there are ways around that....

This pm we are cleaning the boat and taking down the sails and canvas which I will take tomorrow to Rolly Tasker to be serviced.

I am delighted to report that Fujin and crew are now safely in harbour at Yacht Haven Marina in northern Phuket after another eventful 24 hour sail from Langkawi.

We left the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club at 1100 on Saturday in calm, windless conditions and motor sailed north. The first few hours were scenic and quiet but after clearing the island, we started to encounter large numbers of squid fishing boats - quite a navigational challenge, especially after sunset.

Soon after dark, lightening started flashing all around and by the start of my watch (2100 to 0000), a big squall hit us with winds up to 46 knots kicking up very quickly. Fortunately we had 3 reefs in the main and no genoa given the stormy conditions. Torrential rain again too... I was quite happy to hand over to Morgan at midnight! I slept like a baby and thanks to my blackberry switching to Thai time without me realising, I was an hour late for my next watch...

Dawn broke with us just out of sight of Phuket and we spend the rest of the day making our way into YHM, where we arrived at 1700 this afternoon. As you can see from the photo, Fujin is safely in her berth. We have spent a pleasant evening having drinks and food at the Haven restaurant nearby - plenty of Thai curry and Singha to wash it down. In fact, the crew are still there as I type this!

Tomorrow, we will clear customs and immigration and start to sort out the yacht.

A great trip and Phuket promises to be a fantastic cruising area for the next 3 years or so!

We are now on our last leg into Phuket, having departed Royal Langkawi Yacht Club (picture) at 1115 this morning. We had a pleasant overnight stay with drinks at the bar and dinner at Charlies Place, overlooking the marina, washed down with a chilled pinot noir for me and lashings of beer for Ivan, Geo and Morgan.... We could not fill our lpg bottles so instead bought a portable one burner stove with a few gas can to keep us in hot coffee and dinner for the next 24 hours.

We are now motor sailing in 12 to 15 knots of wind on the nose, dodging lobster pots and hoping for a wind shift as the land cools so that we can make sail. Hopefully also the lobster pots will thin out in the next hour before nightfall as they are pretty difficult to see in the dark!

Our plan is to anchor near Ao Chalong in southern Phuket tomorrow afternoon and clear in there on Monday morning. Having cleared in, we can head up to the Yacht Haven Marina on Monday afternoon.

The champagne is chilling in the fridge!!

We are now motor sailing into Langkawi and should moor up at the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club in about 3 hours. The sun is shining but there is little wind....

We've had all sorts of weather the last 2 days. Wednesday night, I came on watch at midnight. We had just been zigzagging around lots of nets near One Fathom Bank, a notorious stretch of water in bad weather, with shallows and sand waves on the bottom to make things interesting. A squall came in shortly after I went on watch with winds kicking up to 47 knots in minutes and torrential rain. We just had time to take down most sail (to 3 reefs in the main and no genoa) and to don foulies. Quite an experience cork screwing around - my first fully fledged tropical squall and Ivan tells me it was a big one - needless to say it was an interesting night, trying to keep away from the worst of it using radar. Lots of lightening as well!

To add insult to injury, we have run out of cooking gas so Geo baked his bread in the microwave, which promptly blew a fuse - but fortunately after the loaf was more or less done.

Thursday was much more benign and the picture above was taken in the late afternoon as we went for a swim/fender bash... And Thurs was shower day too - good to feel clean again!

We will overnight at Langkawi and hopefully refill our 2 gas bottles before heading off to Phuket tomorrow late morning - more tomorrow some time!

Ivan and GEO are now transferring fuel from the reserve cans on deck into the main tanks which are 3/4 empty - we'll have a full load after that.

The picture above is of Ivan and Geo's neat repair job on the asymmetric spinnaker - pretty good - just a shame I could not find any yellow repair tape at Marintech in Singapore... Anyway, it will hold until Rolly Tasker can take care of it in Phuket.

In the last 24 hours, we have used all our sails as winds have varied in strength from almost zero to 31 knots and shifted from SEly to NWly.

Last night, I had the dog watch, 3am to 6am and had fantastic sailing with full main and genoa and with the wind over the starboard quarter. Wind strength was variable from 22 knots to 31 knots and with the flat seas, speed over the ground peak out at 9.3 knots - thankfully we did not come across any semi submerged logs!

Today, we've had some good sailing, put up the asymmetric and made good progress. We are now motor sailing with the wind on the nose. We need to keep speed up to 5 knots as we want to put into Langkawi on the way up. That's about 2 days from here - 230 miles or so. We've just passed Port Klang, the main port for Kuala Lumpur, and are now clear of shipping for the night.

Ivan is cooking supper so I shall sign off to help get things ready.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!!