Spectacular Phang Na Bay, Thailand

Immediately following the King's Cup we sailed Basanti up to a bay near the Phuket airport for the arrival of our friend Jane from Madison, Wisconsin.  This was a complete change of pace from the intense racing every day and nightly post race parties to relaxation with the focus on scenery.

We were able to visit a good selection of islands up in the bay.  The locations near Phuket were very busy with day trip boats and kayaks full of tourists but early mornings and evenings (when the day trippers were finished) were sublime.

 

 We enjoyed exploring these islands in the dinghy.  Kayaks would have been easier to paddle through the tunnels, but no one was out there renting kayaks.

 Thai fishermen are busy in these waters and occasionally came alongside Basanti and offered to sell fresh prawns, yum!

Above is a tunnel through to the island's interior that we were able to go through at low tide.  Below is one of the tunnels we paddled through...have to make sure the tide isn't coming in too quickly or we'd end up stranded in there until the tide went out again.

That is only a small selection of our photos from this beautiful area.  Jane stayed with us for this portion of our journey, plus a visit to Krabi and then south to several more Thai islands and then finally we travelled down peninsular Malaysia to Singapore with Jane.  More on these travels in another post.

King's Cup with friends(Dec 2013)

 It's been a long time since we've posted anything so here is little attempt to start catching up on all our activities.  We managed to sail up to Phuket, Thailand in time for the King's Cup regatta...good thing as several of our good friends from Fremantle met us there for the racing and parties.  Above is the photos of all of us with our team shirts.

 Here is part of the team in action...pre-start maneuvers.

 Our tactition, Max, listening for race instructions.

 We didn't cover ourselves in glory, the competition wasquite keen and Basanti sailed with all our cruising gear on board, but we were happy to get a couple of trophies and not go home empty handed.

 These long-tails provided a taxi service for the racers to get out to the boats and back to shore.

 In the mornings it was mayhem on the beach while all the crews found each other, got their lunches and drinks and ice, then took dinghies or longtails out to boats.

 The race week parties are fairly legendary...here we are on our way to one of them.  Each night there was a huge bash at a resort...all you could possibly eat, plus free beer, wine and soft drinks. 

 Pam and Kay supported us at the parties and kept the local shops busy during the days.

One last shot of us discussing tactics...  Big thank you to Max, Belly and Robbie for coming up and doing a fantastic job racing a pretty heavy cruising boat with Phil and Chris.