Ko Lanta

Hi everyone,
Today I had a long sail to Kantiang Bay on Ko Lanta. We are anchored at 07 29.566N 099 04.345E in 8m. We covered 61nm in 11hours. Twas a long day. Anchoring wasn't as simple as it should have been - the windlass isn't letting the chain run out. I had to motor slowly out of the anchorage while I disassembled the windlass clutch, then approach again and let the chain out manually. I hate electric anchor windlasses - they're always breaking down!

Zen Again Track

The wind was a nice Easterly which varied from 5 knots to 18 or so. At 1600 the easterly died and we had an hour of complete calm. Then the easterly came back with a vengeance at 20-25 knots to blow us home. We sailed for 6 of the 11 hours.

The scenery was spectacular along the way, with many small islands rising spectacularly from the sea. Some of them are more obelisks than islands.

The first 10 miles this morning were busy due to the huge number of nets. There was no option but to just sailing over them, keeping clear of the bouys. We learned on Sail Malaysia that the nets are suspended a few metres down, and so it seems to be here. After emerging from the nets we were then dodging pair trawlers for most of the rest of the passage. Happily they were only close to us one pair at a time.

Dodging Pair Trawlers

Last night on the mooring was pretty quiet. For a while the mooring bouy gently tapped the hull but otherwise I had no problems. In the morning one of the other boats had left at dawn. The two others left shortly after me at about 0800. We all headed off in different directions.

Tomorrow I plan to sail to the Phi Phi islands. That will be a relatively short passage of about 25nm. From there it's a similar distance to Ao Chalong Bay in Phuket. I think I might lie in tomorrow...

Trust all's well where you are.