It took a few more days for our Thai visas to expire, so we slowly sailed south of Phang Nga Bay. Ao Chalong is on the southeast corner of Phuket and is the place where sailors and boats check in and out Thailand.
As the prehistoric bay of Phang Nga disappeared behind us, we looked for a nice place to stop along the way. There are many islands In this body of water some are just big enough for a small resort, but all with some form of tourism industry. On a boat, you need to find a place to drop the pimple – not too deep for your anchor chain, not so shallow that the boat could ground, and with a bottom that has no coral to damage.
Ko Nakha Yai (Jamie Furlong)
We stopped at Ko Nakha Yai first, but the waves made life on board uncomfortable. Any swell that rocks the boat back and forth and bangs your head against a locker or your partner is every sailor’s idea of a bad night’s sleep – a gentle rocking back and forth is ideal. So we moved on to the tiny neighboring island of Koh Nakha Noi, where we anchored in a small, sheltered bay. There were no other boats nearby and the only visitors were a group of swiftlets who perched on the guardrail at the bow of SY Esper.
The next morning, with a good breeze, we decided to enjoy a calm sailing before rushing back to the port. We arrived in Koh Khao Nai with a lot of time, but since the anchorage was lumpy and the wind was still good, we continued south to Koh Mai Thon.
A Curious Faster (Jamie Furlong)
The textbooks will make you believe that because Thailand has two monsoon seasons, the months in between are those best times to visit. The prevailing winds from the northeast come in around December and the southwest winds begin in June. In between are the transition times when the wind can come from every direction or not at all and evening storms are the norm. For most tourists, this means that the best time to visit Phuket is from December to March and the islands of the United States Gulf of Thailand such as Ko Samui are best to visit during the northern hemisphere’s summer months. This all makes sense and both places are the most frequented with these steady winds.
But our experience tells a different story. Sure, when the southwest is at full strength, you don’t want to be on the stormy west coast where violent waves hit the beaches, although it can be an exhilarating place to spend some time overlooking the Indian Ocean. There are many islands in Phang Nga and the Krabi area, the east coast of which is idyllic and less busy in the summer months. The real storms don’t accumulate until later, from September to November, and even then they are interspersed with sunny days. The northeast monsoons are a little different as typhoons can occasionally migrate across the gulf from the Pacific, making for an uncomfortable vacation.
In Mai Thon, Jamie went to work with the boat including anchor control, propeller scraping and outboard maintenance. I didn’t feel like jumping into the violent current, so I helped by tethering him to a secure line and giving him tools to scrape off barnacles and other growth from the torso. Later that afternoon, spectacular storms swept from all around us until the sky settled into another orange-purple sunset.
Writer Liz Cleere and photographer Jamie Furlong are travelers first, then sailors. Your blog, Follow the boatis a travelogue about two people and their cat Millie, who sail around the world in an unspecific zigzag. They also post video diary updates on Patreon and Youtube every week.
Main picture: Thunderclouds over Thailand (Jamie Furlong)
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