Made It To Chalong Bay

We left the marina yesterday right on time --- 2:30 in the afternoon at the highest tide, and the last high tide that our boat could clear for another 10 days. Phew.

Diny and I drove the car to help Leigh find a hotel and to do the huge provisioning, so weren't on the boat for the first sail to Chalong Bay. (About a 3 hour sail). We spent 4 hours in the grocery store, and when we finally called the boat to have someone pick us up in the dingy, the wind had picked up, it was dark, and the seas were a bit rough for the first dingy adventure. The Captain told us he couldn't come and get us, so we drove to Diny's friend Lisa's house for the night. She has a lovely place near Chalong Bay, and directed us to an international grocery store where this morning we found the last items on our shopping list that we hadn't found at the Big C Supermarket. Pickles, salsa, instant oatmeal, tortillas, tortilla chips, tonic water, wasabi-- it was a very successful trip.

CJ met us with the dingy this morning for two full runs to the boat. We are going to clear customs today and leave Thailand at dawn tomorrow. That is the plan right now, anyway.

We'll leave Thailand for about a 12-day sail to Cochin, India. The next time you will hear from me, I'll most likely be in the land of tea and spices. I spent a week in Cochin in 2000 when I was in India, and really enjoyed it. I read an article in the NY Times about it a couple months ago, and I didn't recognize the things they were writing about. It might be a very different place than the sleepy mellow place I remember.