The sting in the tail of our Andaman adventure came when we were all set for an evening departure from Port Blair; the anchor was up, the dinghy on deck, and we were under way, when Port Blair Radio boomed out on the VHF, ‘Brother Wind , return to harbour, you have not cleared immigration correctly.’
Only an hour before we had met the immigration people at the dock, to fill in the last forms, while he stamped us out, indeed we had emptied out all our small change and given it to him, so we were not amused by having to re-anchor, re-launch the dinghy, put the outboard back on, and return ashore.

It finally transpired that we had returned our special permit, which listed three people, and only two of us had checked out! They had no record of Gus having left us two weeks earlier.

We apparently should have written a letter requesting permission for him to leave. Luckily Giles with the conviction of the innocent declared that we had written a letter, and delivered it to their office. I knew that that letter had been about the Crawleys arriving, but Giles’s utter conviction that we had written a letter, persuaded them to allow us to go, and our rather terse reception turned back into smiles again.

So much for leaving with the last of the light, but better than having the Indian navy firing across our bow!

Our sail back was a smoother affair than our crossing over, but the wind was more fickle. Our original plan to cross direct to the Surin Islands had to be modified, when the engine went back to its new trick of not circulating cooling water, so we crossed direct to the Semilan Islands, further south, and nearer to Phuket should we need assistance!

The Semilans are fifty miles offshore from Phuket, and have good snorkelling and diving. The place is fairly over run with dive boats, but the water is clear, and the large granite boulders produce a different seascape. We found to our astonishment that the coral here, though not good, is significantly better than the Andamans, though the fish are not a patch on the variety, size and quantity we had become used to there.

We were happy to relax, and spend a bit of time catching up here before heading on to the trials of Phuket, where we swallowed our marina aversion, and reluctantly booked into the Royal Phuket Marina, to try and get some of our problems sorted out, i.e. the continuing regulator problems, and the leak in the water maker.

The Royal Phuket is a concrete jungle physically next door to Boat Lagoon, which we couldn’t get into, where all the services hang out! It was also a good spot to collect my brother Mike and his wife Laurian, who arrived on the Monday evening. The down side is that it is unbelievably hot and airless, not a great introduction to Thailand, direct from a cold snap in the U.K.!

A busy morning followed their arrival, including Mike and I cadging a lift to ‘Tesco’ to restock our depleted stores. Then we retraced the tortuous winding channel that cuts through the reef, giving access only for an hour over high tide, and into the silty waters of Phang Nga Bay.

The main feature of the bay are the beautiful limestone karst islands which litter it. These dramatic lumps of rock rise sheer out of the water. Some of them have an eroded central core, accessed usually by a tunnel or passage to form a ‘hong’ or room. They are of course a great tourist trap, and we failed this time to avoid the tour boats busy disgorging lots of people to see them. However, they are still worth the experience.

We feel that Thailand is ‘home waters’ these days, but we chose a slightly different route with Mike and Laurian, and we haven’t sailed up here since 2009. We decided to check out from Krabi rather than Phuket, which caused us all sorts of difficulties, and from there we headed to the well known Phi Phi Lei (the Beach), where we saw an eagle headed ray while snorkelling. On we went to Koh Lanta, anchoring in Waterfall Bay in the south, where we walked up to the waterfall (or trickle) with Mike, getting back just before dark. Meanwhile Laurian had been sketching an elephant swimming with Brother Wind in the background!

On the west side of Koh Lanta, the ‘Old Town’ had just been having a festival, so our proposed re stocking was a problem, as most of the shops were closed. From there we headed to Koh Muk, where you swim through a long tunnel into a beautiful ‘hong’ to find a white sand beach and huge straight trees. We had obviously chosen schools’ day out, as we shared it with lots of school children, who get swum in in a crocodile! The water is so clear and green, that it remains a very special experience.

There were some encouraging changes to Thai waters, we anchored on the east side of Koh Kraden, trying to get shelter from the very variable wind which blew strongly from the SW most afternoons, and then changed to the NE later! As we seemed to be in a shoal of small jelly fish when we arrived, I didn’t go snorkelling, but next morning decided that all was clear, and astoundingly found lots of live coral, by far the best we’ve seen in Thailand. The fish life exists in sadly reduced numbers, no surprise considering the amount of fishing in Thai waters.

On we went from here, passing the towering limestone karst island of Koh Phetra, and continued to one of my favourite anchorages in the area, the narrow Bulan Passage, where you enter the narrow channel through a rocky throat to the north, and leave to the south. The anchorage has sheer tree covered cliffs rising on either side and is wonderfully calm. It feels like being in the jungle, monkeys squabble on the shore, and White bellied sea eagles and Brahminny kites circle overhead. The night was alive with jungle sounds.

Tarutao, our next stop, is the largest and wildest of Thailand’s south western Butang group, and part of the Thai Marine National park. It is uninhabited jungle, and had been the site of both a civilian and political prison until WW2. The huge bay at the southern end is very shallow, and our efforts to creep closer to the shore resulted in touching the bottom. So we resigned ourselves to a long dinghy ride of about a mile ashore. Although we failed to find the remains of the prison, we did find the track presumably built by the prisoners, which took us some distance through the jungle, and would have continued for the whole length of the island. It would make a decent walk for another time.

Koh Lipe, to the west is the tourist trap of the Butang group of islands, full of small resorts and dive operators, but we needed some stores, so anchored between Lipe and Koh Adang, anchoring carefully between two moorings. The water is clear here, and the snorkelling was good.

By the time we came back a large ketch had picked up a tiny buoy too close to us, and it has to be said provided an evening’s entertainment as the day wore on and local tour boats started rafting up very close to him. The young occupants of the boat had meanwhile gone ashore!

At this point, we decided that although we were clear of them, we were closer than we liked, so we moved a bit, and left them all to their tangle!

Next day we headed on to Langkawi and Rebak marina, pausing on our way to cast me adrift in the dinghy and try to get some photographs of Brother Wind under sail. As usual the wind died, and the results are dull.

I had a mass of washing to get done at Rebak, and Laurian was keen to enjoy the resort, but the rains have come early this year, and instead of washing drying in minutes the rain fell!!

The sun eventually got out, so the swimming pool was enjoyed by some and others washed out the anchor locker and recalibrated the chain! Next day we headed on to Kuah and the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club, where it is much easier to get trades on board to help sort out various things, replacing the exhaust pipe on the engine, grinding down the impeller plate, hopefully to sort the suction of the sea water cooling, and getting canvas people on board to look at our rotting spray hood, and readjust the bimini.

Poor Mike and Laurian hired a car, for a rather wet tour of the island, and then flew on next day for Penang and then home. We meanwhile head back to Rebak today, and hope for enough dry weather to get the sails off the boat and stored in the dry, and do our final clear up with some dry weather. We are unlucky with the weather, two years ago we only had one spell of rain before mid April when we left.