My Personal Sailing Adventures - with land trips on the side: All I ever dreamed, but better

Yana de Lys at anchor in front of the Butterfly Bar

I’ve dreamed of travelling since I was in primary school. My summer Almost Circumnavigation of Phuket Cruise was all I had dreamed of but much much better.

Our leisurely anchorage crawl began in company with SYs Sweet Robin and Black Pearl. Three boats and three fun families anchored off Kamala for Christmas and New Years.

When we first pulled up at the beach in our tenders the staff at the Butterfly Bar made us feel so at home we made it our second home. They watched our tender when we went out exploring for the day. More on the tender later. They took our laundry, ordered our ice and had it all delivered. Gave us use of their simple shower. Cooked fabulous local food, and sold us cold beers. Kamala beach is all eye candy according to the boys. Plenty of Russian ladies parading in G-string bikinis and high heeled bling sandals. Even the babies ccouldn't have been cuter if they tried. What’s not to love?

Of course there were lanterns to launch and lots of fireworks for New Year’s Eve. Just before midnight a rogue firework which horizontally along the beach rather than up into the sky. Straight into our tender. Yep. Out tender was blown up by fireworks. Fortunately no one was hurt!

The hole was way too big for my puncture kit

It took a month, but the owner of the bar which set off the bad firecracker compensated us and we ended up with a better tender as a replacement. In the meantime we kept cruising with over 100 empty plastic water bottles and a whole lot of gaffer tape keeping our tender afloat.

It floated in a disabled kind of way

After Kamala we cruised slowly slowly for another month up past Phuket to Khao Lak. The soundtracks we fell asleep to varied vastly. A weird kind of stereo with Johnny Cash covers from the northern end of Khao Lak and tribal drumming from the south. Just the sea at our most peaceful anchorage at Thai Muang. Fleetwood Mac covers at the chaotic circus that is Patong.

Khao Lak

Then it was time to head back south and around the island to our home mooring at Yacht Haven. And start getting ready for our trip to Borneo.