Enso sail

Our next adventure was to head south west to Ko Chang for a stretch of the legs and see some new stuff. We planned two days of about 56 nautical miles each to reach Ko Chang.

Our first day was a little more exciting than we expected, the navy was practicing live firing and we manged sail right thru the practice zone. After a lot of radio calls and some floating around we got enough sea room to continue. The marina office here will let you know if they are doing exercises but only for the bay of Pattaya, a bit of a learning curve there!

After that it was a nice sail down to the island of Ko Samet where we anchored close to the Na Dan pier. It has this huge statue of a female giant standing waist deep in the water at the end. The thai navy showed up in a rib right after we dropped the hook to collect the national park fee, 200 baht a person plus a ticket for the boat. Luckily the tickets are valid for a while and we also used them on our way back.

The pier is quite busy till about 7pm with speedy tourist boats buzzing back and forth and large wooden ferries. On shore was a concert or possibly a comedy show. Hard to tell as it was all in Thai. Later on in the evening when we close up the boat and run the aircon it blocks out a lot of the ambient noises. 

Our run southeast to Ko Chang started early with little wind and not much swell. We put up the sails to try and motorsail but it was a lot more motor than sail. The sea was quieter with only a few fishing boats and the occasional container ship waiting for a pilot. We had to pay attention for the fish traps which can be hard to see; a single bamboo pole sticking about a meter out of the water with a colored flag. Luckily you can pass pretty close to them as they tend to appear in large groups, and the rope goes straight down to some nets or pots deeper down.

We have been told Ko Chang island group is best during the northeast monsoon season, you can anchor next to the best beaches and be protected. But we arrived during the last weeks of the southeast monsoon, so we chose places protected from the southeast.

We stayed at Coral beach right on the top of Ko Chang, which has a small resort on the beach, a concrete pier people fish off of and a large navy reserve/forest land. A small fleet of fishing boats was there but everyone was gone by morning. 

Anchoring the boat has been pretty easy, haven’t had any issues dragging or getting stuck so far. (Haven’t had a whole lot of wind yet either) Our vesper cortex radio system has an anchor watch function that has been pretty great. You drop a pin as you lower the anchor and can then adjust your scope. If you forgot, you have an option of doing it later and changing where the anchor is approximately. A nice change from other apps or chart plotters. 

We swam off the boat every morning, and even found a couple fish hiding under the hulls. Si and I picked new fins in Pattaya before we left and they make such difference if there is current pushing you around.  We also did some boat chores, Simon went up the mast to align the spreader camera.

We had a really good thunderstorm show one night with brilliant orange flashes but no rain or wind for us.  Just a nice dramatic sunset.

One day we took the dinghy out and snorkeled the reef closer to shore, the visibility wasn’t amazing but it was really fun to see the fish and coral. Then we came back and picked up John and Dana for a snorkel and walk on shore. Turns out they have a lot more snorkel experience than we do! They were leading the way. 

All too soon it was time to head back to pattaya to meet our Sailmaker, Neil of barracuta sails. 

We headed out early in a grey and cloudy day. We motored for an hour till the wind filled in and then upped sails and immediately found a thunderstorm to sail thru. Reefed the main while the rain absolutely fire hosed down. I ran around and pulled off the shade screens off the saloon windows. They made it impossible to see, the pounding rain and mist were also a big problem. The radar was working well and showing us all the fishing boats and the storm cells around us. We were sailing into what looked like another huge storm cell so I had us drop to reef three. Turned out it brought a lot of rain but the wind dropped to nothing. All thru the storm the fishing boats would appear out of the grey, still fishing, just another day on the water for them.

By the time John was back on the helm we were into high clouds and by mid afternoon we were motoring thru the military practice zone and it was sunny and hot again. (No practice this time!) We had a successful adventure on the boat. Enso handled the rainstorm like a pro (no leaks) and her crew managed to get their jobs sorted with only a little bit of struggle. Back in Pattaya in time for sunset and a beer with another Seawind owner.

-Bree