Broken Bits, Beautiful Islands & Fellow Cruisers!

In our last post, we made our way up the west coast of Thailand, stopping at Nai Harn, Patong Beach and other fabulous destinations, which are only good anchorages during the northeast monsoon. We stayed no longer than a night at these anchorages as we were eager to get to Koh Phayam and, from there, begin our exploration of the Surin and Similan Islands. We spent nearly a week at Phayam meeting other sailors, making new friends and gathering further information about cruising Thailand.

Broken bits…

When it was time to leave Koh Phayam, we pulled up the anchor and pushed the accelerator lever forward. Surprisingly, we didn’t move forward; the motor just revved in neutral. We had no forward or reverse. While Dwayne fiddled with the accelerator lever, we were, unbeknownst to Brian and Debra, slowly drifting over towards SV Chinook. We couldn’t get Thorfinn into forward or reverse, so we dropped the anchor again and took some time to try fixing the problem.

We have on our accelerator lever a little red button that, when pressed in, it puts the motor in neutral so that the engine can be used to charge batteries, etc. We do this very occasionally when we want to cool down the glycol tanks in the freezer. A few days earlier, we had done just that and failed to notice that the red button did not pop out when we put the lever back into the neutral position. We poked and prodded the stubborn little button to no avail. Fixing the problem would entail taking the mirror off the wall in the aft cabin to get to the back of the accelerator assembly (about 50 screws…ok, I exaggerate… only 22). Dwayne decided we would move on to the Surin Islands as planned and fix the problem when we arrived.

Ok… so we just had to get the engine into forward. We did this manually with the lever on the gearbox. First, we had to work out which way to push or pull the lever to get forward and not reverse. That done, we pulled up the anchor, and Dwayne took the helm while I, in the engine room, manually pushed the lever down and put the boat into gear.

So we were off – problem put aside for the time being – we had a good sail, for part of the way to the Surin Islands, before the wind dropped off almost entirely. Moving along at 2 knots didn’t suit our agenda, so with 30NM to go, we started the motor and motor-sailed the rest of the way.

Beautiful Islands…

We anchored at Koh Chi, a beautiful little island with some of the most remarkable snorkelling. It is a very deep anchorage, and we had to drop the pick close to the rocky shoreline… therefore, before we could relax or go snorkelling, we had to fix our accelerator cable. We couldn’t afford not to have the boat in ship-shape condition when anchored this close to shore. So, in the aft cabin, we removed the mirror to get to the accelerator assembly. After much fiddling, spraying with WD40, and testing, we finally had it all working again. So we replaced the mirror and screwed all 22 screws back in, popping their little covers back on and then we jumped in the water for a snorkel. Amazing! Beautiful! Surreal! Our stay in the  Mu Koh Surin National Park was nothing short of sensational. 

Towards the end of our time in Mu Koh Surin, our generator started spraying diesel while charging the batteries. We rely on our generator to run our water maker, which is the principal way of *charging our batteries. Dwayne inspected the errant machinery and found the offending part to be an o-ring fitted to the fuel pump. We didn’t have a spare o-ring to fix it. We would have to cut our island cruising short and head back to the mainland to get this tiny, seemingly insignificant part we desperately needed. Our saviours came in the form of Graham and Julie, who were anchored nearby on SV New Views. They had popped over to Thorfinn to invite us to join them for lunch at the restaurant on Koh Surin Nua. Dwayne mentioned our problem, and Graham came to the rescue with a container of o-rings of all sizes; amongst them, Dwayne found the one we needed. Tragedy averted – slight exaggeration – Dwayne fixed the generator, and we spent another couple of days enjoying Mu Koh Surin before we moved on to Mu Koh Similan. 

We left the Surin Islands at 1500 and motor-sailed to the Similan Islands as there was very little wind.

The Similan Islands were busier than the Surin Islands, probably due to the closer proximity to Phuket. We picked up a mooring at Koh Bangu, surrounded by tourists and fast boats screaming in and out all day. But it was lovely at the end of the day when most tourists were gone; you get the place to yourself!

Fellow cruisers…

We moved on the next day after receiving a message from our friends, fellow sailors Phil and Helen from SV Meridian, that they were at Koh Miang. We met with them and spent the next few days cruising the Similans in their company.

As I mentioned, the Similan Islands are busier than the Surin Islands – at least in our experience – and we soon found out that the snorkel boats also used the public mooring we had picked up that day. We had several boats tie up and hang off Thorfinn’s stern. Then the tide changed, and we had a tour boat raft up. We didn’t like this much – Thorfinn had just had her hull painted – but since we wanted to stay where we were, there wasn’t much we could do about it. Many fenders were used, and Thorfinn was ok at the end of the ordeal! While rafted up, we had Phil and Helen over for lunch. I made salt and pepper school prawns. The tourists on the tour boats were a little jealous of the delectable aromas from our galley…. we nearly had a few stowaways!

Another highlight of our stay in the Similan Islands was celebrating Phil and Helen’s wedding anniversary. We had a feast for lunch. Crispy duck salad for the entree, roast pork belly with savoury cabbage for the main and to drink, Phil and Helen whipped out a bottle of champagne! Delicious lunch, great company and a perfect setting… couldn’t ask for anything more!